ABSTRACT
In two recent studies (Baumann, Edwards, Boland, Olejnik, & Kame’enui, 2003; Baumann, Edwards, Font, Tereshinski, Kame’enui, & Olejnik, 2002), we explored the effectiveness of teaching middle-grade students to use root words, prefixes, and suffixes to derive word meanings, that is, to use word-part clues. We also taught students to scrutinize the text in sentences and paragraphs around an unfamiliar word to infer its meanings, that is, to use context clues. Results supported the effectiveness of our interventions. Quantitative, or numerical, findings revealed that students learned the meanings of prefixes and suffixes and used that knowledge to derive the meanings of novel words with affixes. The data also demonstrated that students who were taught specific types of context clues were able to use contextual analysis to unlock the meanings of unfamiliar words.
