Unity and Reconciliation
Senior 4 · English (Languages)
Unity and Reconciliation
Lesson 4 of 5
40 min
Let's begin
Take the verb reconcile. Add -ation and you have a noun, reconciliation. Add -able and you have an adjective, reconcilable; put ir- in front and it turns negative, irreconcilable. One root, four words, three word classes. English grows its vocabulary mostly by building on words it already has, and once you know the building methods you can understand, and spell, thousands of words you have never been taught. Read the speech below and notice how many of its words are built from smaller ones.
Written by Ganzaa for this lesson. The school and the speaker are invented.
1 Good morning, teachers and fellow students. Today our club opens the peace garden behind the dining hall. Last term it was a rubbish dump; this term it has flowerbeds, two benches and a signpost that reads Together.
2 Why a garden? Because unity, like a garden, is not a gift; it is work. Seeds of disunity grow quickly when no one is watching. Misinformation spreads faster than truth, and careless words can do damage that takes years to repair.
3 Each class has planted one tree and promised to water it until the end of the year. When you sit on these benches, I hope you will talk honestly, listen patiently and disagree respectfully. Forgiveness is never automatic, and reconciliation is a long road, but every road is walked one step at a time.
4 Thank you. The garden is now open. Please don't pick the flowers!
Definition
Key terms
| Class | What it does | Examples from the speech | A quick test |
|---|---|---|---|
| noun | names a person, thing, place or idea | garden, unity, truth, reconciliation | can follow the or a |
| pronoun | stands for a noun | it, I, you, each | can replace a whole noun phrase |
| verb | shows an action or a state | opens, grow, spreads, is | changes for tense: grow, grew |
| adjective | describes a noun | careless, long, automatic, open | fits a very ___ thing |
| adverb | describes a verb, adjective or sentence | quickly, honestly, never, now | answers how? when? how often? |
| preposition | links a noun to the rest of the sentence, often for place or time | behind, of, until, at | is followed by a noun phrase |
| conjunction | joins words or clauses | and, but, because, when | joins two clauses |
| determiner | introduces a noun and limits it | the, our, each, every, two | comes before any adjective |
| interjection | expresses feeling on its own | (oh, wow, well) | can stand alone with ! |
Class depends on use, not on the word alone. In "The garden is open", open is an adjective; in "Our club opens the garden", it is a verb. Some words belong to more than one class: each is a determiner in "each class" and a pronoun in "each of us".
| Process | How it works | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| affixation | adding a prefix or suffix to a root | disunity, misinformation, careless, forgiveness |
| compounding | joining two whole words into one | flowerbed, signpost, peacekeeper, homeland, peace-loving |
| conversion | using a word in a new class with no change of form | a host → to host; a chair → to chair a meeting; to text a friend |
| clipping | shortening a long word | examination → exam; telephone → phone; laboratory → lab |
| blending | joining parts of two words | smoke + fog → smog; breakfast + lunch → brunch; motor + hotel → motel |
| acronyms and initialisms | using the first letters of a phrase; an acronym is said as a word, an initialism letter by letter | UNESCO (said as a word); UN, NGO, REB (said as letters) |
| back-formation | removing what looks like an affix to make a "shorter" word | editor → edit; donation → donate; television → televise |
| borrowing | taking a word from another language | safari (from Kiswahili); gacaca and umuganda, used untranslated in English writing about Rwanda |
| Affix | Class change | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| -tion, -ation, -ment | verb → noun | reconcile → reconciliation; commemorate → commemoration; agree → agreement |
| -ness, -ity | adjective → noun | kind → kindness; aware → awareness; equal → equality; secure → security |
| -ful, -less, -able, -ive | noun or verb → adjective | peace → peaceful; care → careless; rely → reliable; divide → divisive |
| -ise (also -ize), -ify, -en | noun or adjective → verb | memory → memorise; unity → unify; strength → strengthen |
| -ly | adjective → adverb | honest → honestly; patient → patiently |
| un-, dis-, in- (im-, il-, ir-), mis- | no change of class: negative or "wrongly" | unfair, disunity, impartial, illegal, irreconcilable, misinformation |
Worked example: building the word family of unite
Now try forgive: forgive (v), forgiveness (n), forgiving (adj), forgivable and unforgivable (adj).
Warning
Spelling traps when you add affixes
Tip
Meet an unknown word? Take it apart. Misinformation = mis- (wrongly) + inform (tell) + -ation (noun): "wrong information". The suffix tells you the class, the prefix changes the meaning, and the root carries the core. This works in exams where you cannot use a dictionary.
Word Formation Processes, a short overview by the linguistics teacher Evan Ashworth (about 4.5 minutes, 2022). Pause after each process and add one example of your own from this lesson's speech or tables.
Practice
Key points
Sources and credits
Quick check
Which word correctly completes the sentence? Hate speech is ___ because it sets people against each other.
