The Tips on Teaching Compounds

Abstract

To teach compounds effectively, this paper aims to explore the rules in terms of their grammatical categories, stress, and meaning. The study shows that there are two rules to predict the grammatical categories of compounds:

Generally speaking, if the head of compounds is the content word, the grammatical categories of compounds are determined by the right-hand words.

If the head of compounds is the function word, the grammatical categories of compounds are usually determined by the left-hand words.

In addition, there are several rules to determine the stress of compounds. For example, the primary stress of noun compounds is placed on the first element, and light stress is on the second. Also, the meaning of the head of the compound seems to be central to the meaning of the whole compound. The pedagogical implications are also suggested.