See if you can put your knowledge of word parts to use on a more challenging scientific explanation. Click the link below to read “Biological Diversity,” an article that appears on the website for the California Department of Parks and Recreation. Parts of the article may be difficult for you to read because of the technical and scientific language used. Don’t worry if you don’t understand every detail in the article. Instead, notice how many words you can define just by looking at the word’s prefixes, suffixes, and root words.

How did you do? Were there some words that you could figure out, even though you’d never seen them before? Compare your approach to the strategies described in the tabs below. You may learn a few more word attack moves to use in the future!

Break It Down Find Common Ground Consider the Context

Even when you do not recognize a word, you might be able to recognize some of its parts. Consider microclimate, for example. You probably already know what a climate is. You probably also know that micro– means “small.”

Question

Based on these clues, what is a microclimate?

Answer

a small area that is defined by specific environmental conditions

Another approach is to look for variations of words that you already know. For example, if you know what replace means, you can probably guess that displace means to put something somewhere else.

One example of a word you may not immediately recognize in this article is temperate. However, you probably already know that the word temperature is used to explain how hot or cold something is.

Question

Based on your knowledge of the word temperature, what do you think “temperate belts” are?

Answer

You might guess that temperate belts are areas that are not too hot or too cold.

If you can’t determine a word’s meaning from its word parts, try using context clues, such as how the word is used in the sentence and paragraph where it appears. Context clues may take the form of definitions, explanations, or examples. Notice how the paragraph below uses resilience.

There is growing conviction among conservation biologists that greater biodiversity also confers greater resilience within ecosystems. Resilience refers to the ability of an ecosystem to maintain its functions in the face of disturbance. A climate-resilient ecosystem would retain its functions and ecosystem services in the face of climate change.

Question

Using the context clues in this paragraph, how could you define resilience in simpler language than the article uses?

Answer

Resilience is the ability to “bounce back” or recover from hardship.

Here are some more words that might have presented problems for you. See if you can define them using the clues provided for each word. Once you think you know the definition, click the word to check your answer.

Define This	Clue	The Solution
facilitate	The suffix –ate means “to be acted upon in a specific way.”	Try thinking of a facility―a guided walk, a visitor center, or a bathroom―as something that is designed to make person’s park visit easier. You could decide that facilitate means “the act of making something easier to do.”
preservation	The suffix –ation means “the act or process of.”	If you know that preserve means “to make something last,” you might guess that preservation means “the act or process of making something last.”
ecosystem	The prefix eco– means “environment.”	You should know that a system is a group of things interacting together. When you add eco– to system, you get a word that describes how a group of related organisms interact within their environment.