English Word Formation and its Pedagogical Implications for EFL

Abstract

English word-formation is usually taken for-granted by teachers and planners, and words are still assigned to classes (noun, verb, adverb, adjective…) by a technique which goes back for two millennia (Matthew, 1974). This paper has two aims: first to review types of English word-formation and, second, to discuss the need for word-formation teaching in EFL.