Knowledge of morphology can help us dealing with the words that have

multiple meanings. Some words contain many meanings but different word classes.
This is concerned with the process of derivation which is known as zero derivation or
conversion. According to Lieber, he said that conversion is the process by which
lexical items change (grammatical) category without any simultaneous change in
form (2005). It means that the process without adding affixes to the roots, converting
the words grammatical functions and creating a related meaning that have similar
concept to the first meaning. For example, the common word, like water. Water can
be either noun or verb. In the sentence I drink the water, it plays the role as a noun
while in the phrase water the plant, the word water is a verb. Actually, many words
have the semantic relationship but some of them have obviously unclear semantic
relationship. The word water is semantically transparent which means both of the
meanings no matter it acts as a noun or verb still has the relationship. Meanwhile, the
meanings of the word chair are completely unrelated. For instance, the statements I
sit on a chair and I chair the meeting. They both have different meanings and they
are not morphological conversions. The understanding of the zero derivation process
benefits a lot for us, as teachers, in the future. Since sometimes we are quite
confused to use the words with multiple meanings, we can help them to identify the
grammatical function of a word by including learning about polysemy. Polysemy is
words that have more than one related sense (Crossley, Salsbury & McNamara,
2020). In a study, Carlo et al. taught fifth graders about how English words work.
Topics included learning about polysemy (multiple-meaning words), learning the
structure of morphologically complex words and understanding the nature of
academic language (2004). It means that students can learn words that can use for
different functions.
The knowledge of morphology can help us to examine unfamiliar words and
figure out their meanings (Carisle, 2004). Gaining words meanings means exploring
roots, prefixes and suffixes which we can found in any languages in the world.
Actually, English has adopted quite a few loan-words. For instance, the word
alcohol, which is from Arabic, angel from Latin, tycoon from Japanese and yogurt
from Turkish. According to a research made by Nagy, Anderson, Schommer, Scott
and Stallman, more than 60 percents of the new words that we encounter can be
identified their morphological structure since the words can be separate into parts

(1989). For example, the word careless can be broken into the noun care and also
the derivational suffix less. Therefore, some people, who identify that the word
careless is unfamiliar to them, will be able to know the meaning by separating the
morphemes. In short, when we improve our morphology language, we can
understand complex words better (Abbott & Berninger, 1999; Bowers & Kirby, 2009;
Bowers, Kirby, & Deacon, in press; Carlisle & Stone, 2005; Kieffer & Lesaux, 2008;
Ku & Anderson, 2003; Nagy et al., 2006; Nunes et al., 2003; White et al., 1989). As
teachers, it is quite hard for us to make students understand the meaning of
unfamiliar words that they found while reading. However, we can teach them by
separating the words into roots, prefixes or suffixes since the new words that they
found actually involve these basic morphemes. For example, In a study made by
White, Sowell and Yanagihara, the third graders who were given training on the nine
most common prefixes and a strategy decomposing words into roots and suffixes
outperformed a control group on several measures of certain word meanings (1989).
Therefore, in future, we should help students to learn the new words and
comprehend the meanings by giving them opportunities to learn about word origins
(roots) and derivations (prefixes and suffixes).