Word formation in english activities

Word formation is of crucial importance in language learning. It gives a chance to enrich the vocabulary with the help of already-known roots and words. In this article, we will discuss affixation (adding suffixes and prefixes to the root) as a great word formation tool.

1. It is important for learners to know how to form nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. If the teacher intends to devote the lesson to noun formation suffixes, he/she may prepare a poster activity with a chart of different noun formation suffixes.

Learners are given a pack of verbs and they need to classify these verbs according to the appropriate noun formation suffIx (e.g. move, friend, revise, appear). This is a very useful activity since the learners work in groups and they come up with the forms rather than being provided with them. See an example of the chart below.

The same activity can be applied while teaching adjective or verb formation suffixes or prefixes.

2. A maze, aimed at recapping suffixes and prefixes, is a great revision activity of word formation. Students try to exit the maze looking for words which follow the same word formation rules. The task might be the following:

• find the right path choosing adjectives whose opposites start with the prefix in-.
• find adjectives which form nouns by adding ance/ ity, etc
• find the words with the correct word formation.

Students are timed and it adds extra competition spirit into the activity.
See an example of the maze activity here.

3. 3. The teacher prepares two sets of word card: prefixes/suffixes and words that fit the chosen prefixes/suffixes to create new words. Students select one card from the Words pile and try to match it with the appropriate prefix /suffix to make a new word, note the new word down, put the Words card aside, and continue until they have no Words cards left. They can play individually/in pairs, in groups, against the clock or against each other to make as many correct words as possible.

The example provided here is targeted at revising noun suffixes -ment, -tion, and -sion.

Parts of Speech Bingo is an old but a tried-and-tested way of not only teaching but also revising word formation. Teacher selects words he/she intends the students to revise and prepares bingo cards. The game can be played either in this way when learners call out names of parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, adverb), students cross out one word at a time (even if they have several nouns on their bingo card) or read out a sentence with a gap. Students who have the fitting word say it out loud and cross it out.

5. Students stand/sit in a circle, you (or any other student) select a category (word building suffix or prefix), students pass the ball around saying the words without repeating them and you monitor whether they are correct. The first person to say the wrong word/not say anything at all is eliminated (leaves the circle). The game goes on until there are two players left. Change suffixes/prefixes for each new round. It is a super engaging game and helps the learners dig deep to find a word which fits the category.

All these games are nice tools to help learners memorize word formation affixes. In order to reinforce the material, learners may be asked to come up with sentences where they need to use some of the given words, make up stories, ask questions to their partners. In this way, the knowledge of these words seems more purposeful to them and they enjoy this great way of expanding their vocabulary.

PDFs and teaching ideas on affixes (prefixes and suffixes), changing verbs to nouns, etc. If you like anything here and want more, please support TEFLtastic.

Teaching word formation articles

7 word formation games – LINK UPDATED

FCE Use of English Part Three word formation teaching tips

Index pages in this section

Prefixes games/ worksheets

Photocopiable word formation classroom activities

Describing processes word formation (in this bargain e-book)

Word formation spelling rules for IELTS Academic Writing (in this very cheap e-book)

CPE Use of English Part Three word formation hangman

Suffixes for describing people subject questions quiz (-er, -or, -ee, -ant, -ist, etc)

Word formation list dictation game

Adverbs in CPE Use of English Part Three game

Prefixes with opposite meanings jigsaw

Negative prefixes jigsaws (with CPE and academic vocabulary versions and presentation stage)

Character words with negative prefixes games (jigsaw and speaking)

Word formation reversi memory game

Prefixes with opposite meanings discussion and presentation

Affixes with opposite meanings reversi game

CPE word formation brainstorming game

Key words in business writing Word formation games

Academic Word List word formation challenge game

Cambridge First Certificate word formation challenge game

Weather and adverbs of frequency speaking game (with weather vocabulary word formation)

Food vocabulary word formation challenge game

Meanings of affixes

Word formation discussion questions

Word formation Compare your weeks

Ranking things that make people feel good and bad Word formation

Word formation Call my bluff (students can then go on to set each other similar challenges)

Academic Word List vocabulary with negative prefixes

Word formation extended speaking

Word formation and responding sympathetically

Education vocabulary word formation

Use of English Part Three practice of speculating language (linking speaking and Use of English)

Use of English Part Three word formation practice of comparing and contrasting for Speaking Part Two (ditto)

Related pages

FCE Use of English Part Three word formation games/ worksheets

CPE Use of English page (including Part Three on word formation)

Updated 31 August 2022

Word formation is the addition of affixes like -ly and semi- to make longer words and different kinds of speech. Although it is often included in EFL exams and higher-level textbooks, it still probably gets just a few percent of the attention of lists of similar vocabulary, let alone tenses. Perhaps one reason for that is the lack of fun things you can do with it, something that this article seeks to start redressing.

Word formation brainstorming races

Give students a couple of minutes to brainstorm words with a single affix, e.g. il- or –ity. If it isn’t a prefix, you could also give them an additional two minutes with a (paper) dictionary to try to add to their answers. Then give them a big list of such words to compare their answers to (something which you can easily make by searching the internet for lists of words “beginning with…” or “ending with…” then editing the lists down). If there are patterns in those words (e.g. im- usually being with words beginning in P or M), see if they can work them out for themselves, perhaps with some good examples highlighted to help them.

There are also ways of making this more competitive, e.g. as Board Race or with different groups brainstorming different things and correcting each other (losing points if their corrections didn’t turn out to be correct).

Word formation list dictation

This is kind of the opposite of the game above. Read out a list of words which have something in common, e.g. words which take –en to make verbs (broad, wide, length, etc). Students listen to the list until they work out the missing affix, with five points for a correct guess, minus one point for a guess which isn’t true about those words, and no points for a guess which is also true but isn’t what the teacher is thinking of. They can then do the same thing with a version of the worksheet that the teacher is reading from with the answers taken out, check their answers, and test each other in groups. They could also use dictionaries or the internet to make similar lists to test other groups with.

A variation is to read a list of words that already have affixes on them in which all the affixes have the same meaning, e.g. –ship for relationships, asking students to guess the meaning of the affix for that list of words.

Word formation snap/pelmanism

This is a livelier game for practising several similar ways of forming words, e.g. un-, il-, ir- and im- for opposites or –ment, -ness and –ity for nouns. Prepare a pack of cards without those affixes. With the usual rules of Snap or Pelmanism, students have to try to get cards by finding pairs which match by the affix that could be added to them.

Word formation sentence halves matching pairwork

Find or create some sentences that include the affixes that you are practising. Split the sentences at the affix, e.g. “A sense of wonder” “ment is essential in a great artist”. As in this example, the sentence halves should be matchable by both the affix and the meaning. Give the sentences halves to different students and ask them to match them without showing them to each other (i.e. just speaking and listening). They should try to do so just with the split words first, then use the whole sentence to check their answers. There are several ways of organising this. The easiest is to give pairs of students Student A and Student B worksheets with the sentence halves in mixed up order, asking them to match sentence starter 1 with sentence ending J etc. It can also be organised as a mingling activity with single cut up sentence halves, with students coming up to the teacher for more when they think they have found matches.

Word formation jigsaw text

This is like an extended version of the task above. Cut up a whole text before suffixes and after prefixes, e.g. “The plan was completely il” “conceived and badly planned but somehow the original” “ity of how it was carried out made some kind of crazy sense and…” Students work together to put the text back together from logical and word formation clues. It might also be possible to design this as an oral task.

Word formation Call My Bluff

Students find examples of real word formation in a dictionary and make up two or three wrong alternatives, e.g. “punishment”, “punishness” and “punishation”. They read them out to another group, seeing if they can fool them about which one is the real one.

Something similar can also be done with written exercises such as FCE Use of English word formation ones. Students fill the gaps with a mix of the real and wrong answers and other groups see if they can spot which is which.

Word formation sentence transformations

The keyword sentence transformation exercises in FCE Use of English can also be used for word formation, e.g. by giving them “I was happily playing in the sandpit when the snake appeared – happy” for them to make “Playing in the sandpit was making me happy when the snake appeared”. Games with this include memory games like Grammar Reversi and challenging them to use as many different forms of the underlined word as they can to express exactly the same meaning as the original sentence.