Abstract
词汇是我们在英语学习过程中最大的障碍。然而，英语构词法能够帮助我们很好的辨别并正确理解英语，同时也可以在短时间内增加我们的词汇量，英语构词法是学习英语的有效途径和强有力的“武器”，在所有的英语构词法中，词缀法能够生成的新单词是最多的也是最广泛，它被认为英语学习的最佳途径之一。除了词缀发以外，复合法、转类法、混成法、截短法、首字母拼音法、逆向构词法也都是英语学习的有效途径
Vocabulary is one of the main obstacles of English study. However English word formation can help us recognize English words, understand them correctly, and enlarge our vocabulary quickly. It is an efficient way and powerful weapon for English study. Among them，affixation is the strongest one to form a great range of vocabulary, and it is claimed to be one of the best ways of learning English. Besides, compounding, conversion, blending, clipping, acronyms, back-formation are also efficient ways of learning English. In the paper the ways and characteristics of word formation is analyzed form these aspects: affixation, compounding, conversion, blending.
Key words: English, lexicology, word formation, affixation
（关键字：英语、词汇学，构词法，词缀法）
Introduction
The expansion of vocabulary in modern English depends chiefly on word formation. There is a variety of means being at work now. The most productive are affixation, compounding and conversion. Talking about word formation patterns means dealing with rules. But not all words which are produced by applying the rule are acceptable. The acceptability is gained only when the word have gained an institutional currency in the language. Therefore rules only provide a constant set of models from which new word are created from day to day. Rules themselves are not fixed but undergo changes to a certain extent. For instance, affixes and compounding processes may become productive at one time or lose their productivity. By word formation processes, we concentrate on productive or on productive rules. While applying the rules, we should keep in mind that there are always exceptions. In my opinion, the most important principle for all these rules of word formation is economy.
Chapter 1 the function of English word formation
1.1 Word formation is an effective way to enlarge our English vocabulary.
Nowadays, more and more people have taken notice of learning English. The number of the people who begin to learn English has increased at a high speed. How can we improve our English effectively is undoubtedly the focus of our attention. Generally speaking, vocabulary and grammatical rules are keys to learning English
well. Among the two aspects, vocabulary apparently plays a more important role.
V ocabulary is the foundation of language. If a language learner doesn’t have enough vocabulary to express his or her opinions and understand other people, even if his or her grammatical rules and pronunciations are excellent, but he can not communicate with others well, he shouldn’t be a good language learner.
Under the influence of traditional teaching mode, teachers often emphasis more on grammatical rules and pronunciations than vocabulary. As a result, students spend a lot of time on remembering new words, but the results are not so efficient. However if we have a knowledge of English word formation, the results will be not that bad. Word formation is really an effective way to enlarge our English vocabulary.
1.2 Word formation can help us have a better comprehension of an article.
When we are reading a new article, we often encounter with some new words that we have never seen before. In this case, most of us will leave out the new word and go on with the following sections. However, this is not a good habit. If we want to improve our English, we have to take every new word seriously either look them up in the dictionary or search for the internet. But don’t you think that these methods are inefficient? If we know something about English word formation, maybe the article would not be so difficult for us to understand. In this way, we can guess the meaning of the new word according to what we have learned about English word formation. It has been proved that our guess is correct in most cases. So we say word formation can help us have a better comprehension of a new article.
1.3 Many new words can be derived based on the rules of word formation
Recent years, the use of computers as a medium of communication has given birth to a new language phenomenon-cyber language. A large amount of cyber language has sprung up. Not all the new vocabulary can be recognized by human society. Some new words only emerged in a very short time and then disappeared, however, there are still a lot of words are shared by many people. Finally, these words are recognized by the whole human society. Some are even added to the reversed dictionary. Can we say that these words are unreasonable and irrational? The answer is absolutely “No”.
Most of the new words that have been recognized are derived based on certain rules of word formation. For example, the sentence “3QU” is widely used in the chatting room on the internet by foreigners. This is also known as one important characteristics of English word-productivity. So it is necessary for us to learn English word formation.
Chapter 2 Affixation
Affixation is generally defined as the formation of words by adding word-forming or derivational affixes to bases. This process is also known as derivation, by which new words derived from old or base forms. The words that are created in this way are
