Use PREFIXES to Build Your Vocabulary

hello hello hello welcome to today's lesson my name is Wes this is interactive English and it is the place that you want to be if you're looking to learn and improve your English skills and today I have a very cool lesson for you because it is a lesson that many of you have requested this is a lesson that you guys chose that you wanted to learn about and that is this I am going to teach you and talk about how to build your vocabulary with prefixes that's what we're gonna discuss today we're gonna talk about what prefixes are what they mean how we use them and specifically how they can help us expand our vocabulary and we can just learn new words new words new words and really really grow our vocabulary and improve our English fluency now Before we jump into it what I want you to do is I want you to write your name in the comments in the chat tell me where you're joining me from and even if you're watching this later we just want to hear from you write your name say hello we love hearing from you guys hi you Lisa jr. Rosario Kiara Samantha hi I'm Vivian Bassam welcome thank you guys for joining me today now let's really jump into the lesson so we're talking about prefixes we're talking about just a part of a word so really we need to take words and and break them down as much as we can and then we can add to them now what I mean by that is this look at this word right here the word is in action in action and I tried to just break it down by using that little pick that pencil image there so we have our root word which is the smallest form of the word and that is act now to act is basically mean something something's happening we can add the suffix tion action now it means like it gives movement we think that something is happening and moving around and there is action if we add the prefix to that in action it changes the meaning altogether and it basically means well no action is happening nothing is taking place so when we talk about this we need to understand that words can be broken down into different parts even the word prefix can be broken down into two different parts we have pre which basically means before and fix means to attach prefix we're talking about attaching letters before a word which is the prefix and that's going to change the meaning of those words so that is what we're going to look at today we're gonna do I'm gonna talk about some common prefixes we're gonna talk about what they mean I'm gonna give you some examples and at the end we are going to practice what we've learned so let's start out with just a basic question about what are prefixes as I already said those are letters that we add to the beginning of a word and that creates a new word and meaning now what it helps us build the vocabulary is that if we learn the meaning of the prefix then that's gonna help us determine the meaning of the words that it goes before because you're gonna see these prefixes the same prefixes again and again and again look at this example right here everybody knows probably the word happy what does it mean happy well if you want add the prefix to that unhappy it basically means not that you are not happy now anybody can all you could always say not happy the effort that makes sense but if we want to to use it in one word we use the prefix on and say something you know it makes me unhappy you don't like it so we are using the prefix unn to change the meaning of happy so what I want you guys to do right now as we go through this lesson all of you guys that are in the chat or even if you're watching this later and using the comments as I go through some of these prefixes I'm gonna give you tell you the meaning I'll give you some examples I want you to be thinking of other words that have this same prefix and write them down write them in the chat write them in the comments because what I want to do is just build this list of vocabulary words for people to see because like I said we use these prefixes the same prefixes with with so many different words so as I go through these I want you guys to write some words that you know that you that start with this prefix so fittingly because my example was unhappy let's start with on the prefix on un now if we see this prefix before a word it's basically gonna have one of three meanings it's going to be mean it's going to mean either not remove or reverse and I've had these example sentences right here so again if you're in the chats or use those comments what are some other words that use this prefix that start with on let's see let's see how many words that we can get so I tried to think of some example sentences using common phrases that you might see or hear and the first one like you say somebody might say you know I have some unfinished business alright we have some unfinished business to attend to it means that it is not finished where there is more business that we have to do unfinished not finished the next one can you undo the spell now this might be something that maybe you'll hear it or if you're watching a Harry Potter movie or read it in the books and somebody's talking about a magic spell and you want to reverse it you want to undo this spell and then the last example sentence is we need to unpack our suitcases so you can pack a suitcase and put clothes in or you can unpack the suitcase and remove them and take the out so these are three different examples of how we can use the prefix on we have some other great examples unusual unreal unstable uncomfortable excellent thank you guys for sharing perfect let's look at the next prefix this one right here D is dis this one means not or opposite of and it's challenging because there's many there's a lot of prefixes that mean not and and again this is where it's important to just practice and practice and practice so that we understand which prefix goes with which words so try to again think of some words what are the words can you come up with that begin with dis so here are my two examples right here we were dissatisfied with the meal if you're satisfied you like it you're happy if you're dissatisfied you are not happy you don't like it you were dissatisfied with the meal or if we're talking about sports and the competition and you could say the cheaters were disqualified from the competition they were eliminated they were removed from this competition they they were they were disqualified so again great examples disabled dysfunction disagree there are so many examples and this is a great way to again have everybody see these words and create this list now let's look at these right here this is a lot to take in so I just lumped all of these together ill em in here and when you see these they they have the same meaning it's either going to mean not as I said there's many that have this meaning me though so they'll either mean not or without so when you see these prefixes attached at the front of a word it's gonna mean not or without and there are many many examples out there and I'm sure you guys write those in the comments so my examples theft is illegal something is not it's illegal or somebody might say somebody's somebody's taught telling a ridiculous tale a ridiculous story and you're thinking about the events that happen you say well their story seems improbable to me probably didn't happen it did not happen it's not probable it's improbable or he felt insecure during the presentation if somebody feels insecure they're not comfortable they're not happy so they maybe feel insecure because of some event and the last one down here this is a very common word that you would see irresponsible if somebody is not responsible they're irresponsible and somebody might tell you don't be irresponsible all right always you should always be responsible don't be irresponsible okay so again there's many many different words inconvenient irresistible imbalance excellent thanks for sharing with us jr. so these are all words that there's many words that they'll mean not or without let's look at the next prefix that I want to go over out so if you see this one and I know I'm going quickly today we're going through these fast and then we're gonna practice some but again it's always good to practice these because it's gonna help us build double our vocabulary because you're learning a new word if you see out it it's going to mean that you go beyond or you're talking about outside of something so in my first question right there do you think you can outrun me can you outrun me can you if we are running can you go beyond what I can do can you go beyond me and the answer to that is probably you can because hey I'm not very fast and I feel like I'm a little out of shape and don't have much endurance so many of you out there could probably outrun me the next one out they outlasted the competition so if you're talking about outlast it does it makes me think of courts or athletics and you outlast someone else or another team or your opponent they outlasted the competition or you like my picture right there the when I think of an outlaw I I think of the Wild West you know Cowboys and back during that time when people were outside the law they were outside the law they were referred to as outlaws he is an outlaw that is a perfect image right there of an outlaw the next prefix that I want to show you guys is this one right here Otto and if you see Otto before a word then it just means self okay self is what it means for example I love reading autobiographies a biography is a story about a person now an autobiography means that that person wrote the story about themselves they wrote that story there their self all right it's an autobiography another common word that we see this with is you could say right now everything is on autopilot a pilot is a person that flies a plane and there's a function autopilot it means the planes flying itself but we also use this word when we're talking about basically any system that we're discussing and say you know things are on autopilot right now everything's moving along by itself it's on autopilot so those are some useful words with Auto and there are many many others out there automobile autobiography automatic many words that you will see that use this prefix now let's look at today's tip done tada and today's tip is this you might be asking yourself right now well Wes how do we how do we learn these what's the best way to learn prefixes and what I would say is the the best way to do this because there is no rule there's no rule of like okay if if a word begins with this letter you're gonna use this prefix there's no rule like that what I would say is you should learn prefixes just like we're doing right now learn them as you might learn new words what is the meaning because once you learn the meaning of a prefix and then you see that prefix later on attached to another word it's gonna help you figure out what that meaning is because if the prefix means not then basically you could just and you know what the other word means that then you'll know like unhappy then you'll know okay this means not happy so it's important to learn the meaning of prefixes now once you've learned the meaning I think a great way to identify and think of okay well which prefix goes with which words the best way to do that I think is with reading and listening and I would think reading is even better because again listening is a very it's it's a very fluid motion when you're listening to a conversation nobody's gonna stop and be like wait wait wait let me identify that prefix but when you're reading it's more reflective you can stop and think about the word and actually pick out the prefix and see how it's being used and see the word that it's being used with because as you see these these words you're taking that information in and once you take that information in you are understanding it then you're more likely to use it correctly the next time you were speaking and you're having a conversation so what I would suggest to you is the next time you are reading something you are reading a book you are reading a story even if you're reading a short little article online see if you can identify some of the different prefixes because I guarantee you you will see something you will see many of them if you're even reading a short article and that's going to show you okay all right we use this prefix with this word and you're going to take that information in you'll be able to remember it and then use it the next time you want to either speak the language or right so that is my tip for all of you guys now let's look at let's continue our list and talk about some more prefixes now let's look at this one de if you see these two letters before a word it's gonna have the following meaning it's going to mean lessen or change or off now again in the chat in the comments what are some other words that you can think of what are what are some other words that are have this prefix before it here are some of my examples the land has devalued for years if something D values it means that the the value is going down down down down down in you it's lessens the value lessens its devalued you can also this is uh this is my Star Wars reference someone deactivated the hyperdrive if you deactivate something then you are turning it off alright it is deactivated and then finally this is something that all of us probably should do from time to time we should debug our computers because as we surf the internet our computers can pick up these different bugs and we need to change and lessen and get rid of these bugs and we want to debug the computer so again there are many many other words that you might see with this depreciation depression there there's so many out there and it's great to be able to understand these prefixes now this next one is a very common one and I think many of you probably know it are e if you see this before a word it just means again all right re when you see re it means again for example many times as a teacher in the classroom students would write stuff they would write papers and I would often have them I would show them some corrections and say look it really helps you should rewrite this rewrite this correct your mistakes it's going to help you and in this sentence I had to rewrite the business proposal I had to write it again or the student reapplied to graduate school you can reapply to something you can apply again so if you see our e it just means again next we have miss this is another very very common one and if you see miss it just means incorrectly or badly so again I tried to think of some common common sentences somebody might tell you look you you misinterpreted the message you misinterpreted the information it basically means that if you misinterpret something you interpreted something incorrectly you thought you knew what you were doing or you thought you knew what the meaning was but no it was not correct it was incorrect you misinterpret information you misinterpret the message you can also misbehave the child misbehaved last night in this case it means badly all right misbehaved is behaving badly and finally this is another common sentence that you might hear or you might even tell somebody and say whoa wait well there's been a misunderstanding there has been a misunderstanding that the information that we were trying to understand it's incorrect all right so there's been a misunderstanding something is incorrect and then you try to resolve it so these are some very common ways that we can use miss alright there's this is a very very common prefix that you guys will see attached to the front of many many words now a lesser known prefix but one that is still very relevant is omn I so you're not gonna see this one as frequent but if you do it's great to know what it means because it's usually attached to these larger words and I think most of us could put the the meaning in context but it's always good to know so if you see Omni in front of a word it's going to mean all or every so I'm NIT present so if something is present if something is omnipresent it just means it's everywhere so buses are an omnipresent noise throughout the city maybe there's so many buses around the city you always hear the sound of the bus it's an omnipresent noise it's everywhere or the satellite emits omnidirectional signals so satellites typically emit signals now if those signals are going out in every direction you could say it's omnidirectional so Omni means all or every it's a lesser known one but it's great it's great to know and understand because you might see this one later on now another prefix I have this one is just for fun okay it's mostly with spoken English you don't really see it in writing in its this uber and I almost think it's kind of like slang nowadays now uber means very over or beyond it's a German word so this is something that English has borrowed from German and people will use it as a prefix to to certain nouns or adjectives to mean very over or beyond and like I said most of the time you're just gonna you might hear this in spoken English maybe people that are typically younger because it's more to me it's a little more slang than it's not formal language at all it's very informal but I wanted to give you some examples so you can see how it's used in context they you could say somebody they went to an uber fancy restaurant yesterday and if something is uber fancy it means it's very fancy but also beyond to the point where it's probably unnecessary that something was you bur fancy you know it's not necessary it was really really fancy but that's how you would use it with that adjective then you could say then oh oh wait then I just caught one of my mistakes not than tha and it should be then th en then we went to this uber cool club alright so if something is very cool and you really want to emphasize it you might hear some people talking and having conversation say oh this was an uber cool Club and there's my picture of a club but it's been a while since I've been to a club so I I cannot relate to this I have not been to any Buber cool clubs so now that we've discussed the meaning of these some of these different prefixes let's practice what we've learned da da da it's time to practice I hope you're ready alright so what we're going to do is I am going to give you the prefixes that we talked about and I'm just gonna give you a sentence and I want you to complete the sentence which prefix are you going to use so really look at the word that it's being attached to some of these are gonna be easy others might be a little tricky and all I want you to do you don't have to write the whole sentence just write the word and I would ask you write the full word because again that that really it helps us take in that extra information because we're writing out the word that it's the pre that that we are attaching the prefix to so write out the whole word and even if you're watching this later I want you to participate use the comments like it's a piece of paper and just write the words and then once we're done hit comment alright so I know that you were interacting and that you were participating in the lesson so my first question to you is this one right here alright here are the prefixes that we talked about I did not include uber on this list because again like I said it's more slang we don't use it that often and especially we don't really use it in writing so here is my sentence we can't break into the bank that's mmm we can't break into the bank that's mmm now our word is possible so which which prefix are you going to use with possible I want you guys to write that in the chat or even later in the comments and try to write write the full word write the word so again you're taking that information in which prefix is used with which word it just helps it's great to do most of you said excellent you guys Rock the answer we can't break into the bank that's impossible we can't do it it's not possible we say something is impossible next let's look at this one and this could be a real situation for many of us that experience cold weather it's so cold outside we need to mmm the windows and when I was doing this think about you getting into a car you're getting into the car and you have the the windows the windshield and you need to mmm the windows the word is frost which prefix are we going to use with frost think about that it's cold outside what happens when it's cold outside what happens to the the window sometime all right which prefix are you guys going to use write the word in the chat I want to hear from you guys or even in the comments yes most of you chose the right prefix we're going to use the prefix de all right defrost which basically again it means to lessen it's cold it's so cold outside we need to defrost the windows we need to defrost them all right next question for you guys is something this is a very very common sentence if you're making a phone call and you are calling a business and you are asking for somebody you might hear this sentence sorry he's mmm to talk right now he's to talk right now we're talking about the word available which prefix are we going to use with available and again the key here is again somebody saying sorry alright so sorry he is mm to talk right now which what's what's gonna go in front of those words right that in the chat write it in the comments yes most of you excellent job we're talking about somebody who's unavailable sorry he's unavailable to talk right now unmeaning somebody is not available let's look at this one all right this one maybe it's a little tricky we thought the movie started at 8:00 p.m. I guess we were mmm all right we're talking about informed we thought the movie started at 8:00 p.m. I guess we were mmm which prefix are we going to use with informed okay the reason that I say this is tricky and because again it's always great to identify prefixes as prefixes with different with words is because sometimes we can use different prefixes with different words and this is one of them so what do you guys think which one are we going to use with informed alright I think most of you excellent you got this right I thought the movie started at 8:00 p.m. I guess we were misinformed all right misinformed you had bad information we can also use the prefix on uninformed but uninformed is different it means that there was no information so that's why I said this first part we thought the movie started 8:00 p.m. so if they were thinking something then that means they got some bad information let's look at this question right here all right we love her work she's in mmm part of the team we're talking about the word dispensable if something is dispensable it means that you know you can get rid of it all right now there's a little hint here I've given you a hint because basically I gave you the article and all right so again if we're talking about and then you know that the word is going to start with a vowel sound okay so which word goes ahead of that if somebody's we're talking about dispensable you can get rid of but you love her work you don't want to get rid of her she is an indispensable part of the team indispensable part of the team all right so this is a great way to practice we are learning the meanings of these prefixes we're seeing words that they're used with and then we're practicing that because as we take this information in chances are next time we have a conversation and we're using these words and we want to say something we're going to use the correct word we're going to use the correct prefix with that word and again I think it's very very important reading is a fabulous way to do that so the next time you're reading I really suggest that you try just take a moment and try to find some prefixes and see which words they're being used with so as always if you guys enjoyed this lesson hit that like button we really appreciate it if you like learning English with us we always want hit that subscribe button and turn on the notifications so that you get updates whenever our new video comes out whenever we do these live lessons because we want to keep growing our classroom also please share this lesson if you know others that are learning English and write to us in the comments because we just love hearing from you guys write to us in the comments practice participate in these lessons that's what we want and if you're looking for more practice join our social media classes we're also on face book Twitter Instagram join us there we post a lot of information and questions to help learners practice and improve their English skills so thank you guys so much Daniel Bassam Rossi Patricia Costa Eunice Ivy Lally Amer you Lisa Cara jr. thank you thank you thank you sorry if I missed some names I hope you guys have a wonderful wonderful weekend and we will see you next time so long

Channel: Interactive English

Views: 19,234

Keywords: interactive english, learn english, fun english lesson, advanced english lesson, intermediate english lesson, grammar lesson, vocabulary lesson, learn english prefixes, prefixes, how to learn prefixes, learn prefixes, how to supercharge your vocabulary, english vocabulary prefixes, english grammar prefixes, build vocabulary prefixes, what are prefixes, how to use prefixes, english practice, prefix un, prefix mis, prefix de, prefix auto, prefix omni

Id: OmGxZ28znXE

Length: 31min 34sec (1894 seconds)

Published: Sat May 12 2018