Building a Better Vocabulary

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z This doesn’t mean that we should give up on studying vocabulary
directly. But if we’re serious about improving vocabulary, in
addition to wide reading, we need to be strategic and thoughtful
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we’ve already discussed. Our language itself helps us in this study
by organizing words by meaning—if we know how to look for
this system.

z English has a built-in system of meaning, or morphology, that
is largely based on the classic Greek and Latin origins of our
language. In fact, approximately 70 percent of English vocabulary
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how to harness this morphological system are at a great advantage,
not only when it comes to learning more words but also when it
comes to storing them in their mental lexicons.

The Spelling-Meaning Connection
z One of the keys to unlocking this morphological system is a
concept known as the spelling-meaning connection, a term coined


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