Departament de Filologia Anglesa

Departamento de Filología Inglesa

Master's degree in Spanish and English as second languages/foreign languages

Actividad Individual I

Name: Svetlana Kazanova

1. Read the concepts of lexeme and word-form studied in class. Think about the main features
that are involved in the concept of a ‘word’, and write a comprehensive definition that
answers the question of “What is a word?”.

A word is a basic unit of language which is a unity of form and content, so it’s a sign
which reflects notions through meanings, which results from the association of a
particular meaning with a particular group of sounds and capable of a particular
grammatical employment. The word possesses relative autonomy, indivisibility and
relative positional mobility.

2. Elaborate a diagram or graph in which you include all the lexicological aspects studied in
the first two weeks of class (e.g. morpheme, affix, combining form, etc.), as well as the major
word-formation mechanisms.
Word

Grammatical Lexical Orthographic Phonological Lexical items

Lexical
relations

homonym
polysemy antonymy synonymy
y

Vocabulary is a system

Paradigmatic relations Syntagmatic relations

 Departament de Filologia Anglesa
Departamento de Filología Inglesa

Master's degree in Spanish and English as second languages/foreign languages

paradigmatic relations

syntagmatic relations

Morphology

Word-
Inflectional
formation

Derivation Compounding

Suffixation Prefixation Endocentric Exocentric

Morphemes

Lexical Grammatical
(derivational) (inflectional)

Free Bound

Root prefixes suffixes

 Departament de Filologia Anglesa
Departamento de Filología Inglesa

Master's degree in Spanish and English as second languages/foreign languages

3. In a recent article describing the use of neologisms and splinters, Rets finds that these
morphological units “[contribute] to the development of students’ language imagination and
creative skills since most neologisms are based on word play” (2016: 819)

a. Are neologisms (or productive splinters) useful to vocabulary teaching in an EFL

class?

- Yes, they are useful because if students understand the meaning of a splinter, they
can easily understand the meaning of other words that contain the same splinter.
Moreover, by adding a splinter, students will be able to create their own words. So, I
agree with Rets’s idea that splinters contribute to the development of students’
language imagination and creativity. By adding productive splinters, students can
 Departament de Filologia Anglesa
Departamento de Filología Inglesa

Master's degree in Spanish and English as second languages/foreign languages

create new original words, play with meaning and still be understood by others. If
they gain this skill, they will get an understanding of how the language works.

b. Let’s suppose that an objective of a vocabulary class is that students can actively use
-holic, -rrhea, -maniac in specific contexts. Can you think of an effective vocabulary
task that allows students to effectively learn and use the resulting derivatives?

First of all, students need to learn the word-form and the meaning of new vocabulary
items. At the beginning of the lesson, the teacher can show a video or a picture of a
person who works too much/eats too much chocolate. Then, the teacher presents new
words. (workaholic/chocoholic). Then, he asks students concept checking questions
(Does this person work too much? (yes) Does he like to eat chocolate? (yes). The
teacher asks a couple of students whether they are chocoholics. Then, students work
in pairs and ask their classmates similar questions. They can create new words with
this splinter (the task is to interact with each other). Then, they can conduct a whole-
class activity which is called ‘Growing stories’. One student should make a sentence
and the rest of the class will continue the story (the story should contain words with
the learned splinters). The story should be as funny as possible because I believe that
humor helps to memorize better new words and constructions. At the end of the
lesson students can perform role-plays (which is also a funny activity). They can use
such words as alcoholic, tweet-a-holic, etc. (they can also create new words with the
splinter).
Overall, during the lesson the students can:
 practice new vocabulary items which contain splinters
 use these items within the grammar topic they were practicing in the previous
lessons
 enhance their communicative skills by interacting with others
 develop creative skills by making up new words