Building a Better Vocabulary

z The Black Death is a perfectly horrifying example of the word virulent. This word has a literal meaning of “extremely infecti ...

Lecture 29: Nasty Words and Nice Words z Not surprisingly, mordant comes from a Middle French word that meant, literally, “biti ...

concrete personal connection to piquant, such as your friend’s spicy KRPHPDGHVDOVDRUD¿JXUDWLYHFRQQHFWLRQVXFKDVWKH³SLT ...

Lecture 29: Nasty Words and Nice Words Salutary (adjective) 3URGXFLQJDEHQH¿FLDOHIIHFWUHPHGLDO z Both salubrious and salut ...

Avuncular (adjective) Of or having to do with an uncle. Resembling an uncle; friendly; helpful; kind, patient, and indulgent. ...

/HFWXUH:RUGVIRUWKH5HDOO\%LJDQGWKH9HU\6PDOO :RUGVIRUWKH5HDOO\%LJDQGWKH9HU\6PDOO Lecture 30 T his lecture foc ...

z The etymology of diminuendo can help you remember its meaning. Diminuire is an Italian verb meaning “to diminish,” and -endo ...

/HFWXUH:RUGVIRUWKH5HDOO\%LJDQGWKH9HU\6PDOO z In 1726, Jonathan Swift published his classic biting satire, Gulliver ...

z You might think that after nearly getting executed, Gulliver would stay at home, but he decides to take to the seas again. Th ...

/HFWXUH:RUGVIRUWKH5HDOO\%LJDQGWKH9HU\6PDOO megalopolis, megabyte (1 million bytes of information storage in a compu ...

it to capable: “Something that is capacious is capable of holding a lot; it’s spacious.” Juggernaut (noun) An overwhelming or un ...

/HFWXUH:RUGVIRUWKH5HDOO\%LJDQGWKH9HU\6PDOO Over the course of his career, the artist’s work showed a __ in the use ...

Spelling as a Vocabulary Tool Lecture 31 T hroughout this course, we’ve been tapping into the spelling-meaning FRQQHFWLRQ VSHF ...

Lecture 31: Spelling as a Vocabulary Tool believes that every letter makes a sound and that we read and spell words in a left-to ...

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Lecture 31: Spelling as a Vocabulary Tool ż Second, children at this stage operate under the principle that every letter makes ...

development, they start processing whole chunks of common letter sequences, or patterns, together. z Children at the pattern st ...

Lecture 31: Spelling as a Vocabulary Tool a silent letter, even though the pattern chosen is not the correct one for this partic ...

ż Further, standalone base words that end in e usually drop the e and add a-b-l-e, as in debate/debatable or dispose/disposable ...

/HFWXUH$0HGOH\RI1HZ:RUGV $0HGOH\RI1HZ:RUGV Lecture 32 I n this lecture, we’ll learn some additional words from the ...