IELTS Preparation Series 3, Episode 24: Word Formation
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Hello, and welcome to Study English, IELTS Preparation. I'm Margot Politis.
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A useful skill in all aspects of English is knowing how new words are formed with prefixes
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and suffixes, and how adding those prefixes and suffixes changes the meanings of words.
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First, let's watch this story about recycling wooden barrels - or kegs - for storing wine.
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Listen carefully for words that have a prefix, or a suffix - or both:
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Wine involves a great deal of recycling. Not recycling the wine itself, but the barrels
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and the kegs that wine is stored in. The barrel's very important. The wood it's made from imparts
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flavour and texture and character to the wine. But after a while the wood loses those qualities
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and the barrel has to be taken apart, the wood refurbished, the barrel put back together.
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From vineyards around Australia, tired old barrels arrive to be renewed. Glenn is a cooper,
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practising an ancient craft with its own language.
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Well, when they come in, we just start taking the ends out of the barrels, loosening the
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hoops on one end, take the head out, retighten it, turn the barrel over and do the same thing
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so that we've opened both ends of the barrel. And we use a grinder with a rotary planer
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head on it to shave, say, four or five mill out of the inside of that barrel so that we
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expose all the fresh oak flavours. The barrel is dismantled. You get different-width staves.
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You get wider ones, you get narrower ones. But you might say, "Why don't they make a
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square barrel?" Well, they have, and it didn't work. So coopering lives on.
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A word that cannot be broken down into parts is called the root, or base word. A prefix
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may be added to the beginning of a word, changing the meaning. And a suffix may be added to
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the end of a word. Let's look at one example.
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From vineyards around Australia, tired old barrels arrive to be renewed.
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Let's look at the word 'renewed'. The base, or root word is 'new', the opposite of old.
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It's an adjective. A prefix 're' can be added before the word. The word is now 'renew'.
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Adding this prefix not only changes the meaning, it changes the function of the word. 'Renew'
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is a verb. The prefix 're' means 'again'. So the new word is a verb that means 'to make
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new again'.
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The suffix 'ed' has a grammatical function you probably know - it changes the tense of
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the verb to simple past tense. So the meaning of 'renewed' is 'made new again'.
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Tired old barrels arrive to be made new again.
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There are some other examples of the prefix 're' in that story. Listen:
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Wine involves a great deal of recycling. Not recycling the wine itself, but the barrels
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and the kegs that wine is stored in. But after a while the wood loses those qualities and
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the barrel has to be taken apart, the wood refurbished, the barrel put back together.
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Well, when they come in, we just start taking the ends out of the barrels, loosening the
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hoops on one end, take the head out, retighten it, turn the barrel over and do the same thing
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so that we've opened both ends of the barrel.
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The three words were: recycled, refurbished and retighten.
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Recycled means to treat something so that it can be used again. Refurbished means restored
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- made better, and to retighten, is simply to tighten again. There is another suffix
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that can be added to 'refurbish' - 'ment'. This suffix carries the meaning of 'an action,
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process or result of', so refurbishment is the process of refurbishing something.
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There are many words in English that use this suffix: development; government; employment;
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entertainment; to name just a few.
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Now, we've heard a bit about the process of refurbishing and recycling wine barrels - but
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who does this work? What is that person called?
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From vineyards around Australia, tired old barrels arrive to be renewed. Glenn is a cooper,
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practising an ancient craft with its own language.
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That person is called a 'cooper'. A cooper is someone who makes barrels. The 'er' suffix
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- carries the meaning 'the person who does that thing' - for example:
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A teacher teaches. A driver drives.
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A footballer plays football.
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And the 'er' suffix isn't only used for people - it can be used for things. Listen:
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Well, when they come in, we just start taking the ends out of the barrels, loosening the
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hoops on one end, take the head out, retighten it, turn the barrel over and do the same thing
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so that we've opened both ends of the barrel. And we use a grinder with a rotary planer
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head on it to shave, say, four or five mill out of the inside of that barrel so that we
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expose all the fresh oak flavours.
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A grinder is a machine that grinds. A planer is a machine, or blade that planes - or makes
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wood smooth. The 'er' suffix has another function too. Listen:
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The barrel is dismantled. You get different-width staves. You get wider ones, you get narrower
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ones.
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You get wider ones. The 'er' suffix here is added to an adjective to make a comparative
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adjective.
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We looked before at the word 'retighten', which means 'to tighten again'. Let's look
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at the word 'tighten'. The root word is tight - an adjective. When we add the 'en' suffix,
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it becomes a verb - to make tight. What is the opposite?
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Well, when they come in, we just start taking the ends out of the barrels, loosening the
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hoops on one end, take the head out, retighten it, turn the barrel over and do the same thing
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so that we've opened both ends of the barrel. The opposite of 'tighten' is 'loosen'. Again,
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the 'en' suffix is used to make the verb - 'loosen' and 'loosening'.
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Here's another example of an 'ing' suffix:
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The barrel is dismantled. You get different-width staves. You get wider ones, you get narrower
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ones. But you might say, "Why don't they make a square barrel?" Well, they have, and it
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didn't work. So coopering lives on.
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Coopering lives on. We've already seen that a cooper is someone who makes barrels. So
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coopering is the work of making barrels. Notice here that the word 'coopering' in the sentence:
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'Coopering lives on' is the subject of the verb 'lives'. This is an example of a gerund
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- where a verb is acting as a noun in a sentence.
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Finally, notice that when describing a process we often use passive voice verbs to describe
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the actions in the process. Listen for the verbs:
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The barrel's very important. The wood it's made from imparts flavour and texture and
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character to the wine. But after a while the wood loses those qualities and the barrel
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has to be taken apart, the wood refurbished, the barrel put back together.
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The barrel has to be taken apart. Notice that in a passive construction the agent, or person
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who does the action, the taking apart, is not mentioned - so the object - the barrel
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is acted on by the verb.
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There are two other examples in this description: the wood refurbished, the barrel put back
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together. Because this is a list of actions in a description of the process, the speaker
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leaves out 'has to be', which applies to all of the steps.
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The barrel's very important. The wood it's made from imparts flavour and texture and
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character to the wine. But after a while the wood loses those qualities and the barrel
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has to be taken apart, the wood refurbished, the barrel put back together.
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That's all for now.
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Remember to visit our website where you can watch this episode again, as well as any other
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episode of Study English, IELTS Preparation.
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I'll see you next time.
