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Topic: Adjective

An adjective is a word which can go before a noun and modify its meaning (the ancient tower) or go after a linking verb like be (The tower is ancient).

Word Formation: Adjective Derivation 2

Plan

Starter

Show learners the first slide and the four sentences. Ask them to transform the base word in brackets into an adjective by using an affix. Ask them to attempt this individually, then in pairs and finally to share with the whole class. Discuss to see if they noticed any patterns. Show the solutions in the next slide. All these examples use suffixes to change a noun into an adjective that shares the same qualities. Also, note that sometimes spelling changes are required. 

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Word Formation: Adjective Derivation 1

Plan

Starter

Show learners the first slide and the three sentences. Ask them to identify the adjectives and to think of an affix they could attach to each one to change the meaning. Show some possible solutions in the next slide and explain how, just like with nouns, we can use affixes to alter the meaning of adjectives. 

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Word Formation: Compound Adjectives

Plan

Starter

Show learners the first slide. Discuss in what ways words such as blackbird are different from ones such as grass-green i.e. the first is a compound noun and the second is a compound adjective. Make sure learners pay attention to the base word. 

The second slide explains the difference in forming these types of adjective are formed. See if learners can think of any other examples. 

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Word Formation: Adjective Derivation 2

Lesson

Starter

Read these four sentences. Each one has a base word in brackets you need to transfrom into an adjective by adding an affix.

What do the examples have in common? Where do they differ?

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Word Formation: Adjective Derivation 1

Lesson

Starter

Read these three sentences. Identify the adjective in each. Discuss if you can add an affixes to change the meaning of the adjective in each sentence. 

  1. This is the only weekly magazine.
  2. She had a cold and a red nose.
  3. My kids always get too active after having sweets.

Here are some ways you could have changed the adjectives with affixes. 

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Word Formation: Compound Adjectives

Lesson

Starter

Last lesson we saw how adjectives can be combined with nouns to make compound nouns, such as blackbird or red card.

Are these next two examples the same or something different?

  • grass-green 
  • lifelong

These words are both examples of compound adjectives.

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Antonymy 2

Plan

Activity 1

Explain to learners that they will continue to look at antonyms, but this time by looking at adjectives. Make sure they understand these key terms by discussing the three example pairs. 

In the next slide, show the learners the five sentences. Each sentence has a gap which can be filled with an adjective or its antonym. Have learners copy the sentences and fill the gap with two possibilities. Reveal the answers and accept any other reasonable options.

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Synonymy

Plan

Please note: there are two pages of activities for this lesson.

Activity 1

Start by explaining the meaning of the term synonym. For an example, ask learners to think of some synonyms for the word 'argument'. 

In the next slide, show the two possible examples. Ask learners if these two words have the exact same meaning or if there are any subtle differences. Try asking learners in what situations they would/would not use each word.

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Homonyms

Plan

Please note: there are two pages of activities for this lesson.

Activity 1

Show the learners the two example words. Ask them to discuss with a partner how many different meanings they can think of. In the next two slides, show possible solutions. 

Next, explain that words with multiple unrelated meanings are called homonyms. Ask learners to identify the word class of the two example words.  

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Polysemy

Plan

Activity 1

Explain that the word polysemy refers to the idea that words can have more than one meaning.

Ask the learners to think of more than one meaning for the words football and mouse and discuss with a partner or small group. Show the next slide to reveal some possible answers.

As an extension, see if learners can come up with any other words with multiple meanings. 

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Englicious (C) Survey of English Usage, UCL, 2012-21 | Supported by the AHRC and EPSRC. | Privacy | Cookies