Teaching Affixes and Cognates to Enhance Spanish ELL’s Lexical Competence

Abstract

This paper discusses the current strategies for vocabulary instruction in the United States K-12 system. It introduces a new method for Spanish-speaking students to use cognates as root morphemes within affix instruction. This method will offer Spanish-speaking English Language Learners tools for lexical confidence that can transfer across languages. In addition, this method teaches learners to recognize words that are similar or borrowed from first language and how affixes may change those words to better isolate the learning of morphological parts and how they can change words. This knowledge will benefit the learner throughout their reading and content-based classes.