Vocabulary Building

Dealing with Unfamiliar Words

• You have read 2 excerpts, are there any
unfamiliar words to you?
• As you read more materials, you will encounter
many words and terms that will be new to you.

What do you do when you encounter unfamiliar

word?
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Dealing with Unfamiliar Words

• If your answer is look up the meaning in the
dictionary, you should rethink your option.
• It will take up much of your time if you are going
to stop and look up the dictionary.

So, how can you determine

the meaning of these words???
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You Are Not Alone

• Even skilled readers such as a professor
encounters unfamiliar words.
• The first strategy to understand the meaning of
an unfamiliar word is to use the context.
• It enables you to make a correct, educated guess
about a word’s meaning.
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Context Clues (definition)

• Words in a sentence or paragraph that enable
readers to reason out the meaning of unfamiliar
words.

Context
• Whatever surrounds something else.
• The context of an unfamiliar word is the rest of
the sentence/paragraph.
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Context Clues
• Ask yourself:

What would this word have to mean in order

for it to make sense in this sentence?

• Authors build in these clues to help you

understand the material that you are reading.
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Types of Context Clues

• You have learned about context clues in general.
• There are 5 types of context clues:
1) Synonyms
2) Antonyms
3) Examples
4) General sense of the sentence
5) Clue from another sentence
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1) Synonym Clue
• Synonyms are words/phrases that mean the
same thing.
▫ or, in other words, that is, by this we mean, that
is to say, also known as

• A synonym can also be an expression that serves

as a symbolic substitute for another
expression.
▫ abbreviation, phrase, symbol
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Example of Synonym Clue

The White House announced today
that it plans to lower taxes.

• Obviously, a building cannot make an

announcement or lower taxes.
• The author uses White House as synonymous
with the president, the person who occupies the
White House.
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1) Synonym Clue
• The author simply tells readers what a word
means.
• Certain phrases are used:
▫ is defined as, means, is known as, the term, is
called
• Use of punctuation marks:
▫ commas, dashes, colon (:), parentheses ( ),
brackets [ ], or quotation marks “ ”
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1) Synonym Clue
• Authors want to make sure readers pay attention
to important terms, they often put them in
special print:

▫ bold print, italics, or colour.

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Example of Synonym Clue

Deceptive advertising is defined as any ad that
contains a misrepresentation, omission, or
other practice that can mislead a significant
number of reasonable consumers to their
detriment.

• The term is in bold print.

• The definition follows the phrase ‘is defined as’.
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2) Antonym Clue
• An antonym clue consists of a word/phrase that
means the opposite of the word you are trying
to figure out.
▫ but, however, on the other hand, nevertheless,
yet, in contrast
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2) Antonym Clue
• Find the word/words in the sentence that mean
the opposite of the word whose meaning you are
trying to deduce, and then think of the opposite
of that word.
• This sounds complicated, but the following
example will make the strategy clear.
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Example of Antonym Clue

A few advertisers are unscrupulous,
but most are honest.

• Unscrupulous advertisers are contrasted with

honest advertisers, so you can reason out that
unscrupulous is the opposite of honest.
• Therefore, unscrupulous means dishonest.
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3) Example Clue
• Example clues consist of one or more examples
that authors include to illustrate the meaning of
the unfamiliar word.

• Typically introduced by:

▫ for example, to illustrate, for instance, such as,
like
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3) Example Clue
• Remember, an example is not the same as the
definition.
• The example is simply a clue that can help you
reason out the meaning of an unknown word.
• If there is more than one example, determine
what is common.
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Example of Example Clue

Celestial bodies, such as the sun, moon, and
stars, are governed by predictable laws..

• sun, moon, and stars are given as examples of

objects in space.
• What they have in common is that they are
objects that orbit.
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4) General Sense of the Sentence

• In this case, you call on your own prior
knowledge and experience.
▫ What does this word have to mean in order to
make sense in this sentence?
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Example of General Sense

There was glass all over the street, and the
children could not ride their bike through it
without getting a punctured tire.

• The references to glass all over the street, riding

bike through it; you can deduce that punctured
pertains to something that might happen to the
tire if they pass through the glasses.
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5) Clue from Another Sentence

• Sometimes, authors include information in
another sentence in the paragraph.
• The other sentence can come before/after the
one with the unknown word.
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Example of Clue from Another Sentence

That comedian has a ribald sense of humour.
Two television networks have cancelled his show
because viewers complained about his lewd
language and vulgar jokes.

• From the second sentence, you can conclude

that ribald means vulgar, coarse, or off-colour.
The clue is that many viewers complained about
his lewd language and vulgar jokes.