Word parts

Download a copy of Paul Nation and Laurie Bauer's 2022 article Morphological Awareness and exercises drawn from it.

Paul Nation and Laurie Bauer - Morphological Awareness

This article has been accepted for publication in Language Teaching Research Quarterly (2023) Vol 26, pages 52-64.

This article by Paul Nation and Laurie Bauer builds on their 1993 article (Word families) and their 2020 book (English Morphology for the Language Teaching Profession) by providing teaching material and very practical guidelines for teachers and learners of English as a foreign language. The article has three appendices which provide:

  • lists of words from the most frequent 10,000 BNC/COCA word families containing affixes from the Bauer and Nation lists
  • affixes from these lists to memorise
  • groups of words containing affixes at each of the Bauer and Nation levels to practice cutting into parts (an answer key is provided).

The history of English words

Word consciousness in English includes morphological awareness, and morphological awareness includes an understanding of the history of the English language and its vocabulary. The following brief history was written by Laurie Bauer and focuses on the sources of English words and word building. An understanding of these two important topics provides a useful context for the learning of complex and compound words in English.