When you watch a movie with a story about triumph and crossing barriers, you notice ways that you can use to achieve personal goals. Movies, like books, provide characters for you to use in your own mind, role playing ways to get around the obstacles that the protagonist, the most dynamic character, faces.
In the movie, Akeelah and the Bee, the first obstacle is Akeelah's attitude that there is really no reason for her to make an effort. She is in a situation that seems, to her, from her viewpoint, to be 'no-win' in relation to doing well in school. She has little support, and when she is able to do something better than others, like spelling, she is ridiculed.
First, Akeelah must be self-motivated. Watching a movie like this one gives us some clues about what to use to arouse our personal interest in winning. What motivates Akeelah? What does she get from all the studying she begins--and finds a way to continue--to prepare for a national spelling contest?
When you find your talent, your gifts, and you begin to develop your individual gifts--whether in academics, team sports, art, dancing, skateboarding, architecture, journalism--the areas of interest to you, people are drawn to you. You are able to find mentors in your field of interest. You are able to learn to work to improve and to share your talent. This 'sharing' is a source of encouragement, and you may find, like Akeelah, that you begin to garner community support. You will also find competitors.
When you find a way to 'compete' with your own personal best, you have found a way to motivate you to make an effort for life. There will always be others who will discourage you, and there may even be others who are better than you are in your areas of expertise. For contests and for winning, there is always another variable. Sometimes that variable can be your own persistence. This characteristic is often called 'perseverance.' Perseverance is one of the greatest gifts a person can have, and this is one you can develop.
The movie is inspiring and motivational. There is a more technical way that this story is helpful to any individual preparing for a standardized test. The study of words and how words are put together is a basic way to use critical thinking to make stronger guesses about what you are reading when the passages or problems include unfamiliar terms. Because so many words in English have Latin or Greek roots, especially words in medicine, law, and science, studying a few words with popular root words, prefixes, and suffixes, sows the necessary elements to decipher many words.
In summary, the more words you understand, especially in origin, etymology, and even pronunciation, the more points you will earn on a test of aptitude, such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test, SAT, and many other standardized tests. The reason this is true is that the answers are in front of you on these standardized tests; and an aptitude test question writer attempts to put as much educational and useful information into the question as possible. The test measurement is about your ability to synthesize, analyze, and interpret what you read and to apply what you know. Some of the questions on the test will be written in a way that you can get the answer without knowing everything about the question. What will help, always, is to be familiar with the words.
For example, if you have a test question that includes the word 'mortuary,' along with a string of other words unfamiliar to you, but you recognize the 'mort' root word, meaning death; you have a strong clue about the passage. If the same passage includes 'century' and you are not sure about this word, but you know that 'cent' as a root word is one hundred (as one cent is 1/100th of a dollar), you may pick up that the author is writing about a certain century (each one hundred years).
Every root word you learn gives insight into a multitude of words. Too, if you begin to notice that 'in' at the beginning of many descriptive words means 'not'; then, if you see the word 'inaudible,' you may notice the audio as a root word meaning sound (audible-you can hear the sound, inaudible-you cannot hear the sound).
Find the meanings of the root words: phon, mort, cent, and dict. Write some words that come to mind and look up the words. Are the words you thought about related to these root meanings? What about centipede, for example? Can you think of other words with ped related to feet? (What is a pedestrian? Is pedal related?)
Find one root word for several English words. Make a crossword puzzle with clues, at least five across and five down, related to words formed from this root. This is a way to learn several words at one time.
Learning why the words have these particular roots (look at centipede again) helps to build logical thinking.
Make up a word yourself. A new word you make up is called a neologism. Why is this an appropriate name for a new word? What does the root neo mean? What about logo?
Akeelah makes cards for the words. Writing on your cards engages your brain around the word in a different way from keying in the word on a computer. Do both kinds of exercises with words. The more you play with the words, using tiles in Scrabble, crayons on white paper, or graphic explanations—the word with a picture, the more connections you will make to what you already know. Look at images related to terms on Google and Yahoo images. Look at images for words like algebra, history, and loyalty. How would you illustrate such words?
Take a textbook from your classes or from someone else, a family member, and go to the glossary in the back of the book. Make PowerPoint 'cards' for all of the words in the glossary. Start identifying roots, prefixes, and suffixes. Notice the different meanings for the words in different kinds of books.
'Coordinate' is a verb meaning to put things together: She coordinates birthday parties. 'Coordinate' is a noun when it is a point on a graph that you plot from counting on the x and on the y axes. Coordinate is also an adjective (descriptive word) used in grammar to describe: having the same grammatical function in a syntactic structure. Example: Both ‘’got up’ and ‘ate’ are coordinate verbs in the sentence: I got up and ate.
Coordinate (noun) is also a variable in chemistry, physics: a variable used with others to describe the state of a physical or chemical system.
'Plot' (noun) is the short version of a story that you can tell in a few sentences. To plot (verb) the coordinates on a graph, you count where the point is coordinated on the x axis and on the y axis.
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Can you see how knowing more about these words will help you if you come across a passage on a test with ‘coordinate’ or ‘plot’ used in something about math or science—or as a part of a question in the section testing language arts?
(Extra definitions from Encarta Dictionary: English (North America)).
You can learn the ways that root words, prefixes, and suffixes result in several words with some parts of their meaning in common—but other parts of the meaning different.
Making a crossword puzzle with puzzle makers on line is helpful for studying several words at once. Coordinate this exercise with making some graphic cards, too. Using other ways to make the study guides will help you to visualize the word in different contexts and to recognize the word with different prefixes and suffixes.
