Because I teach a relatively large population of native Spanish speakers (who are, of course, bilingual, which often makes their low levels of literacy confounding to me), I tend to assign Latin word roots to freshmen, and Greek word roots to sophomores. It goes without saying that I aim to show freshmen, by way of Latin word roots, the commonalities between their native tongue and English–which is, of course, Latin and its roots.
Accordingly, when I publish word root worksheets, I’ll alternate between Latin and Greek roots. This week’s Text is a worksheet on the Greek word roots syn, sym, syl, and sys. As you can see, these are very productive roots–they mean together and same–which are at the base of a number of key high school vocabulary words, not the least of which, for both students and teachers, is synthesis.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
Mark's Text Terminal 