How many of these words do you know?
Do you know both the verb and noun form?
Use the words in the table to complete the ten sentences below.
Today's lesson comes from Nasreen at EC Cape Town English School
Verbs are words for doing something, or being something. "This movie amuses me."
In this example, "amuses" is a verb. "Amuses" is what the movie is doing.
An adjective is a word that describes something.
We can use "amuse" as an adjective. If we want to describe the movie with "amuse", we must change "amuse" to "amusing".
"This movie is amusing."
In English, words are formed with a stem which is then modified with a variety of prefixes and suffixes. These additions can dramatically change the meaning or grammatical usage of the word.
Here is a revision exercise to see if you can deduce which ‘version’ of the word is needed in each sentence. Let us know how you get on.
Lesson by Caroline
English is commonly separated into eight parts of speech. These are:
A prefix is placed at the beginning of a word to change its meaning. For example, the suffix re- means either again or back as in return, repeat or refurbish.
The following 4 prefixes are easy to confuse because they all have a negative meaning.
The prefix un means not, reverse action, deprive of, release from. For example, unable or unfair.
There are lots of adjectives in English that we can convert into nouns by using 'ness'. A noun ending in 'ness' literally means the state of the original adjective.
For example, hungriness means ‘the state of being hungry. Below are ten sentences which require a noun ending in 'ness'.
Look at the adjectives below and guess which one goes in each sentence. Then add 'ness' and change spelling when needed.
Good luck!
Lesson by Caroline
A noun can be a person, thing or place: 'I live in a house.'
A verb shows an action, It is a 'doing' word: 'I play tennis with my brother.'
An adjective is used to decribe or give us more information about a noun: 'A big dog.'
Compete (verb) to try to be more successful than someone or something else. When you take part in a competition you compete.
Compete is a regular verb: Past simple competed / Past participle competed
Convert, divert, invert and revert. All these words end with (the suffix) vert.
What does vert mean?
Vert is a latin word we use in English meaning 'to turn'.
So when you see a word ending with -vert, you know it's related to turn.
Let's take a closer look at these 4 example words.
Last week we looked at how the English language is constantly evolving and new words are added to the dictionary every year.
Here are some more words that have been added in recent years; some of which are frequently used as well as some that you cannot believe have made it into mainstream language! Can you match the words to their meanings?
