Nouns, Adjectives, Adverbs and ESL

Many of my ESL students tell me that they want to improve their vocabulary. One of the tricks I teach my students is how learning/knowing one word can often lead to two or three other words.

For example, if I start with the word "thought" and I know that it is a noun, I can guess that adding "ful" to the end of the word may give me an adjective, "thoughtful." In this case, adding "ful" works to make another word. Adverbs can often be formed by adding "ly" to the end of the adjective, "thoughtfully."

Another example is the word "care"." "Careful" and "carefully" follow the same rules as above and form two new words.

Of course, there are many exceptions and this doesn't always work. This just one more tidbit to teach ESL students to help increase their vocabulary.

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