STP: SELECT, TRANSFORM, PRONOUNCE

STP: The title of this vocabulary exercise is taken from an old race-car motor oil advertisement. Just as STP makes your car run better, our STP (Select, Transform and Pronounce) makes your vocabulary three times better. This is how it works.

MODEL: READ. WRITE. Select unfamiliar words from a reading excerpt. These words are from a biography of Anne Hutchinson. List the new words according to its part of speech as found in the reading. Write a synonym for each word listed.

ADJECTIVE                     NOUN                            VERB
skillful (able)
panel  (group of people)
midwife (woman who helps birth babies)
theocracy (rule by religious belief)
worship (adore)
banished(sent away)
 

PRACTICE: READ. WRITE. Transform each word into the two other parts of speech. If it is not possible, discuss how to use the word as that part of speech. Check out skillful and theocracy as verbs.

ADJECTIVE                                NOUN                           VERB
skillful                                           skill                                 have skill
panel-like                                     panel                              impanel
midwife                                        midwife                          midwife
theocratic                                     theocracy                       theocratize ?
worshipful                                     worship                          worship
banishing                                      banishment                    banished
 

Now students have 18 words in their vocabulary instead of 6. They have also learned how suffixes reveal parts of speech. Examples: -ful always indicates an adjective; -ment always indicates a noun.

ENRICH: SPEAK. LISTEN.  Teacher pronounces each word as it appears in the listings above. Students repeat the word until they have the correct pronunciation.

Sometimes the same word with the same spelling is pronounced differently as a noun than it is as a verb. Example: Transfer (1) Verb – accent on the second syllable                                                                           (2) Noun – accent on the first syllable