What Makes a Word?

Learning a new teaching position (Grade 5 in my case) while completing a master’s degree is no joke. In fact, I tried to drop this final capstone class two or three times! My professor (shout out to Dr. Jennifer Carlson at Hamline University) let me know I was closer to being done than I thought and urged me to give it the old college try. (Literally, in this case.

Eventually, even though I had worked hard and done my best, I felt defeated trying to balance work, life, and education. I decided I needed to drop the course and try again next semester… only to discover I had missed the deadline to do so. Having no alternative but to push through, I did so, and… I finished! In retrospect, I’m glad I missed the deadline because I’m so very happy to be done. Missing the deadline forced me to wrap things up, which was for the best, because I truly believe I could have gotten lost in the minutia of research for ages: adding, tweaking, editing, rinse and repeat.

That being said, I didn’t get to conclude this blog the way I wanted to. I would very much like to wrap up this project, too, and not leave it by the wayside after having submitted my final paper. There are large chunks of important information I want to share here which I haven’t written about yet. All this to say, I’m planning to publish about three more “chapters” or so to conclude this project. After that, I may or may not post anything, but if I do, updates will not be regular.

So, stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion to “Supporting Somali- and Hmong-Speaking English Language Learners’ Acquisition of Morphological Awareness” (official title of my paper) aka: “What Makes a Word?” We’ve got derivational morphology to talk about, as well as some insights into the Somali and Hmong languages, and – perhaps most importantly – the actual best practices I discovered for supporting students learning morphology. That was the whole point of this, after all!

And if you’re reading this at all – whether or not you’ve read any of the other posts, whether you meant to come to this website or just randomly ended up here, whether you’re a teacher, in some other profession, or are just curious about morphology – thank you for being here and supporting this project! I mean it! ^_^