Learning the meanings of prefixes and suffixes, most of which derived from Latin words, can help students decipher the meanings of unfamiliar words that use these same prefixes and suffixes. Design worksheets asking students to match the prefix or suffix with its meaning. This activity is also helpful for college students who are learning medical terminology, because these terms rely heavily on Latin prefixes and suffixes.
One of the best ways to learn a concept is to teach it. If the students are in middle school or high school, assign each student a language and ask them to find three English words that came from that language and explain how it became incorporated into the English language, then ask them to explain what they found to the class. The students may be surprised to find that many of the words that they encounter regularly are actually derived from another language.
When students learn a foreign language, they tend to learn the words that are cognates of words in their native language first. For example, students learning Spanish quickly realize that "problem" and "problema" mean the same thing. However, some words are false cognates, meaning that they sound alike but don't have the same meaning. For example, "estrechar" means "to narrow" in Spanish, not "to stretch." Design a worksheet that asks students to match the English words to its cognate. Include false cognates and words without matches to make the task more difficult.
The English language is always evolving. Language changes as people coin new words and as our culture encounters people from other cultures with globalization. Ask students to go to a slang dictionary website and locate three slang words or new words in English that came from another language. For instance, "escuro" is a slang term that came from the Spanish word "oscuro," meaning dark. Escuro means dim in the intellectual sense, or unpopular. Use this activity as a springboard to discuss the influence of immigration and the globalization of businesses on language.