What is structural analysis in reading?

What is structural analysis in reading?

• A. Breaking words into parts, such as prefixes, suffixes, and roots, to understand their meanings.
• B. Memorizing a list of sight words.
• C. Guessing word meanings from pictures only.
• D. Reading text without decoding.

Answer: (A)

Structural analysis means looking at the parts that make up a word—the base or root and any prefixes or suffixes—to figure out what the word means and how to say it. By breaking a word into meaningful chunks, you can often understand unfamiliar words. For example, in unhappiness, the prefix un- means not, the root happy carries the idea of being glad, and the suffix -ness turns the word into a noun describing a state. So you can infer that unhappiness is the state of not being happy. Another example is predictable: pre- suggests before, dict means say, and -able means capable of, so the whole word points to something that can be said before. This approach helps with decoding and comprehension, especially with longer words. It’s different from memorizing sight words, which relies on recognizing whole words without analyzing parts, or guessing meaning from pictures alone, which uses images rather than word structure, or reading without decoding, which skips figuring out unfamiliar words.

Structural analysis means looking at the parts that make up a word—the base or root and any prefixes or suffixes—to figure out what the word means and how to say it. By breaking a word into meaningful chunks, you can often understand unfamiliar words.

For example, in unhappiness, the prefix un- means not, the root happy carries the idea of being glad, and the suffix -ness turns the word into a noun describing a state. So you can infer that unhappiness is the state of not being happy. Another example is predictable: pre- suggests before, dict means say, and -able means capable of, so the whole word points to something that can be said before.

This approach helps with decoding and comprehension, especially with longer words. It’s different from memorizing sight words, which relies on recognizing whole words without analyzing parts, or guessing meaning from pictures alone, which uses images rather than word structure, or reading without decoding, which skips figuring out unfamiliar words.