Print bookPrint book

Vocabulary Building Practice

Site: Saylor Academy
Course: ESL002: Intermediate English as a Second Language
Book: Vocabulary Building Practice
Printed by: Guest user
Date: Tuesday, 22 April 2025, 5:25 AM

Description

Now that we remember how to use a dictionary and suffixes to improve vocabulary skills, let's put this knowledge into practice.

Table of contents

Building Vocabulary: Let's Practice

The activities below give you the chance to see how well you understand the usefulness of dictionaries and thesauri for building vocabulary. You'll also have a chance to practice working with suffixes. If you have a difficult time working with a dictionary/thesaurus and suffixes, you may return to review the information presented in the Let's Study section and then try these practice activities again.


Activity 1

Think of three words that you have heard or read but don't know what they mean. Try to look them up in a dictionary or thesaurus. Come up with a synonym (a word that means the same) and an antonym (a word that means the opposite). Fill in the chart below. We've done one to get you started. 

New Word Synonym Antonym
extraordinary unusual ordinary




 

    


Source: TV411, https://www.tv411.org/sites/default/files/Vocab05_New-Words.pdf
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

Activity 2

Read the sentences below and label the bolded "-er" and "-or" words with NOUN or VERB.

  1. Juan Carlos is a construction worker. His employer is 5th Street Construction. The company employs 60 people. They offer great wages and benefits to all their employees.

  2. Stephanie is Luna's teacher. Stephanie advised Luna to try and make some good friends among her classmates. Luna took Stephanie's advice and considers Violeta to be a good friend now.

  3. Baby Nathan caught a cold. He isn't improving, so Molly wants to take him to the doctor. She really hopes that he recovers soon.

  4. Violeta volunteers at an elementary school twice a week. She teaches a short Spanish lesson to the students. She is a valuable volunteer, and everyone really appreciates her.

  5. Since Nathan was sick, Molly called a coworker to cover for her. She stayed home with her son until he felt better.

  6. Luna and Violeta didn't bother to look up their assignment on the class website. They remembered what they were supposed to do.

  7. It doesn't matter if you are a student or an instructor, there is always too much work.

Source: Amber Bliss Calderón, https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=pdxopen
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License.

Activity 3

For each sentence in this activity, type the correct suffix that completes the word into the box that follows the two given options. Only type in the suffix, not the complete word.

For example, you would type in “ful” if the correct word is “careful”.


Source: Hansba, https://app.lumi.education/content/63a15d710cb38aa4770db3b5
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.