高考英语构词法

高考英语构词法，英语讲授，词汇学习技巧

How Words Are Formed

When we learn English, it is very, very important to know how English words are formed. Once we know this, we can learn words easily.

English people add "heads" or "tails" to words. The word without a head nor a tail is called root. Usually the head is called prefix, while the tail is called suffix.

Prefixes

There are some prefixes you can add to some words to form new words. For example, mis- can be added to some verbs, meaning "wrong" or "wrongly". I can understand my English teacher well. means I often know what my English teacher says in class. But I misunderstood him. means I failed to understand him correctly.

Adding prefixes is a very common way to form a new word. Most often, we have the following prefixes:

in- (im-, il-, ir-): the opposite of something

independent: an independent person is someone who does not depend on someone else; an independent country is a country which is not controlled by other country or countries; an independent organisation is an organisation that is not controlled or run by another organisation or government.

inaccessible: access is the way or possibility of coming to a place or person. Accessible means "able to be reached". Inaccessible means "very difficult or impossible to go to": Mount Qomolangma (the highest place of Himalayas) is one of the most inaccessible places. impossible: not possible

illegal: legal means "allowed by laws", so illegal means "not allowed by laws".

irregular: regular means "happening every hour, every minute, etc.", so irregular means "not happening every hour, etc.".

tele-: at or over a long distance

television: something you can see, and something that comes to you over a long distance (vision meaning "something you can see")

telecommunication: the communication you can do over a long distance, like phone call, email, etc.

teleconference: a meeting which is carried out over a long distance, for example by telephone, or other ways like television.

telephone: phone is a Greek word meaning "sound" or "voice", so everybody knows this word telephone.

inter-: between or involving two or more people, places, countries, etc.

internet: the Internet is a system which allows millions of millions of computer users to exchange information. Net is something we use to catch fish, etc., and a net is usually made of threads or other similar things like wires that are woven across each other. The way the Internet works is quite similar to "net", so maybe this is the reason people use net to form this word. Another word quite similar is web: a web is something like a net.