Understanding Meaning from Context

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Study Skill 7.2 Understanding Meaning from Context

 

Introduction

How many times have you been reading and run across a new word that you didn’t know? Chances are, your answer is “often.” Don’t let this bother you. After all, the Complete Oxford English Dictionary contains 171,476 words in current use; however, according to a survey by The Economist, the average native speaker knows only 20,000 to 35,000. Clearly, even native speakers encounter words they don’t know. That same survey also showed that the average person learns 1–2 new words a day. So, how is this done?

The secret is in the context. People use context clues to determine the meaning of new words. Let’s watch some videos from Snap Language entitled “Using Context Clues to Guess Unknown Words” to see how this happens.

Watch

Key Ideas

  • Look for synonyms, antonyms, and definitions in the text.
  • Watch out for transition words to identify definitions.
  • Evaluate the general sense of the text.
  • Decide if you really need to know the meaning of the word to understand the text.

Apply

  • Let's practice using context clues with an example from "The Cask of Amontillado..."

  • Use the Context Clues strategies to understand a reading assignment.