To find out why students must learn prefixes, roots, and suffixes, we must first define each of these terms.
Prefixes is the group of letters before the root, and generally has a meaning. For example, in the word "unhappy", "un-" is the prefix, which means "not", while "-happy" is the root, which means feeling pleasure.
Roots are generally the base of the word. For example, geo. Geo means "earth", and is the root word for most of the terms that have to do with the earth, for example, "geology".
Suffixes is the group of letters after the root, and is usually used to indicate whether the word should be used as a noun, adjective, or verb. for example, the word imagination has the suffix of "-ation", in which imagine means to "form a mental image of", and "imagination" meaning forming new ideas without the presence of a physical object.
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