英语单词大师：Grasping Roots

 AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: English teacher Nina Weinstein talks about building vocabulary by understanding root words.

NINA WEINSTEIN: "Basically¹ half of all the words in the English language come from other languages. But the majority of those words come from the same source: Latin² and Greek. And so if we learn certain Latin and Greek root words, we have kind of a window into the English language so that we're not always using dictionaries to help us understand words."RS: "So we've got a big key into our language here. Can we talk about some of these?"NINA WEINSTEIN: Let's imagine that we learn a couple of root words. One simple one is tri, t-r-i, which means three. The next one is let, l-e-t, which comes at the end of a word, and that means small. So if we just start with this and we imagine people talking, the first person says, 'Has she had her baby yet?' The second person says, 'Yes, she had triplets.'"RS: "Three little ones."AA: "Three babies."NINA WEINSTEIN: "Exactly. This is a very simple example for us to learn the pieces, but we want to apply it to other things. So let's imagine a book and a booklet. What would be the difference?"AA: "A small book."NINA WEINSTEIN: "A small book, exactly. A movie star and a movie starlet?"RS: "How can you be a small movie star?"AA: "Haven't you ever heard that term, starlet?"NINA WEINSTEIN: "Starlet -- less important. When we think of a celebrity³, we say that person's very big."AA: "A starlet would be a small star."NINA WEINSTEIN: "It would be a small star. So that person hadn't achieved that much fame yet or importance in their field."RS: "And what are some other hints⁴ that you haven't -- tri is one, it means three; let means small."NINA WEINSTEIN: "OK, we can learn sext, s-e-x-t, which means six, and we can apply it to the example I gave in the beginning. We talked about triplets. So triplets are three babies. How many babies are sextuplets?"RS: "Oh my gosh."AA: "That would be six."NINA WEINSTEIN: "It would be six."RS: "That's a lot of babies."NINA WEINSTEIN: "That's a lot of babies. And we can apply that to another field now. Let's say we're talking about music and we're talking about musical notes. How many notes are sextuplets?"RS and AA: "Six."NINA WEINSTEIN: "Right, but we have the l-e-t on the end, so what does the l-e-t do to the word?"RS: "Little notes."AA: "Oh. So like ... "RS: "So six little notes."NINA WEINSTEIN: "Six little notes as opposed to ... four regular-sized notes. Another common example is cide, c-i-d-e, which means kill; herb, which means plant, h-e-r-b; and carn, c-a-r-n, which means meat. So we learned⁵ herb and cide, so what does an herbicide do?"AA: "Kills plants."NINA WEINSTEIN: "What does an insecticide do?"AA: "Kills insects."NINA WEINSTEIN: "Right. And I didn't teach you insect. So we can apply this piece that we just learned to common words as well, as we break these words apart. We can talk about a carnivore. What does a carnivore eat?"RS: "Meat."NINA WEINSTEIN: "Meat. What does an herbivore eat?"RS: "Plants."NINA WEINSTEIN: "Plants. What does an omnivore eat?"RS: "Both."AA: "It eats everything."NINA WEINSTEIN: "Exactly. What does v-o-r-e mean, vore?"AA: "Like voracious⁶? It has something to do with eating."NINA WEINSTEIN: "Exactly. So v-o-r-e means eat. And so now you mentioned the word voracious. We can apply what you just said to the word voracious. So we've got v-o-r. It doesn't have to be spelled exactly the same way as we present the root. But if we see enough of the piece to recognize it, then that is the piece that we're going to assume⁷ it is. And we try it. If it doesn't work, then we try something else.

"So one of the other tools that I give my students is to ask a simple question when they don't understand a word. They should just ask themselves if the word gives them a positive or a negative feeling. And sometimes this is enough to understand the sentence."RS: "They can figure it out [from] context⁸."NINA WEINSTEIN: "Exactly. And for test-takers this is really, really important. I just took a test in a totally different field where I had absolutely no background and I didn't have a lot of time to study for it, so I just used my root words to kind of help me out with the test questions and I passed it -- really more based on my knowledge of root words and vocabulary words than my knowledge of this field."AA: "Can we ask what the field was?"NINA WEINSTEIN: "Yes. I just got my amateur⁹ radio license¹⁰."AA: "Hey, good for you."NINA WEINSTEIN: "Thank you."AA: "So now you can talk to people around the world on your radio."NINA WEINSTEIN: "Well, as soon as I buy a radio, yes. I think I might need that, I don't know. [Laughter]"RS: English teacher and author Nina Weinstein. One of her books is called "Vocabulary Tools," available through Amazon.com. And you can find our previous segments¹¹ with Nina at our Web site, voanews.com/wordmaster.

AA: And that's it for Wordmaster this week. Our e-mail address is [email protected]. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

1 basically   

adv.基本上，从根本上说

参考例句：

• His heart is basically sound.他的心脏基本上健康。
• Basically I agree with your plan.我基本上同意你的计划。

2 Latin   

adj.拉丁的，拉丁语的，拉丁人的；n.拉丁语

参考例句：

• She learned Latin without a master.她无师自通学会了拉丁语。
• Please use only Latin characters.请仅使用拉丁文字符。

3 celebrity   

n.名人，名流；著名，名声，名望

参考例句：

• Tom found himself something of a celebrity. 汤姆意识到自己已小有名气了。
• He haunted famous men, hoping to get celebrity for himself. 他常和名人在一起, 希望借此使自己获得名气。

4 hints   

n.建议( hint的名词复数 )；细微的迹象；征兆

参考例句：

• This list of hints help the new students a lot. 这一系列的建议对新生帮助很大。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Don't give him any hints when he answers the question. 在他回答问题时，不要给他提示。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

5 learned   

adj.有学问的，博学的；learn的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• He went into a rage when he learned about it.他听到这事后勃然大怒。
• In this little village,he passed for a learned man.在这个小村子里，他被视为有学问的人。

6 voracious   

adj.狼吞虎咽的，贪婪的

参考例句：

• She's a voracious reader of all kinds of love stories.什么样的爱情故事她都百看不厌。
• Joseph Smith was a voracious book collector.约瑟夫·史密斯是个如饥似渴的藏书家。

7 assume   

vt.假装；假定，设想；承担；呈现，采取

参考例句：

• I assume that he won't cheat you.想来他是不会骗你的。
• We can't assume anything in this case.在这种情况下我们不可能做出假设。

8 context   

n.背景，环境，上下文，语境

参考例句：

• You can always tell the meaning of a word from its context.你常可以从上下文中猜出词义来。
• This sentence does not seem to connect with the context.这个句子似乎与上下文脱节。

9 amateur   

adj.业余的，非专业的；n.业余爱好者

参考例句：

• He made an amateur attempt to build a cupboard.他很外行地试做了一个碗柜。
• Although Tom's only an amateur he's a first-class player.虽然汤姆只是个业余爱好者，但却是一流的高手。

10 license   

n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许

参考例句：

• The foreign guest has a license on the person.这个外国客人随身携带执照。
• The driver was arrested for having false license plates on his car.司机由于使用假车牌而被捕。

11 segments   

部分( segment的名词复数 )； 瓣； [计算机]（字符等的）分段； [动物学]节片

参考例句：

• He is eating oranges in segments. 他正在一瓣瓣地吃橘子。
• Gene cloning provides a means of purifying and propagating specific DNA segments. 基因克隆化提供了一种纯化和扩增特定DNA片段的方法。