Teaching affixes and roots helps students to

• A. Expand their vocabulary
• B. Confuse about spelling
• C. Decrease comprehension
• D. Focus only on decoding

Answer: (A)

Understanding how words are built—prefixes, suffixes, and roots—lets students unlock meaning in new words and create new ones themselves. Affixes shift a base word’s meaning or part of speech, signaling negation, repetition, tense, or degree, while roots carry the core idea. When learners know common morphemes, they can infer meanings of unfamiliar words by spotting patterns. For instance, recognizing un- signals negation so unhappy means not happy; re- points to doing again; and a root like spect, meaning look, helps connect words such as inspect, respect, and spectator. This knowledge lets students rapidly expand their vocabulary, which in turn strengthens reading comprehension because they recognize and understand more words in context. It also supports spelling patterns, but the main payoff is broader word knowledge rather than simply decoding.