hello readers you know that feeling when
you're reading and you see a word you've
never seen before and you don't really
know how to figure out what it means
well that's what we're talking about
today strategies for figuring out new
words through context you're always
gonna be encountering new words at the
time of this recording I'm 31 and I run
into new and confusing words every day I
read a lot and it's always a fun
challenge to run into words like I don't
know glabrous or limbed or nae crius i
know a lot about language and even I
have trouble figuring out what those
words mean on their own so it's
important to rely on context the
language that surrounds the word let's
say you're reading a text and you come
across a sentence that has a word net
you don't recognize here's a bit from a
passage about the famous chimpanzee
researcher Jane Goodall Jane Goodall
arrived at Tanzania's Gombe stream
National Park in 1960 she was considered
somewhat unconventional among other
animal researchers after all she had not
yet been to college so let's pause on
unconventional what does that word mean
well let me give you some ideas that's
the memory aid I used to keep it
straight ideas it stands for
inference definition example antonin
synonym I de AAS ideas which are all
different kinds of context clues every
word will have a different context so
you might need to vary your approach the
way this snippet is written let's try
inference first then I'll rewrite the
sentence a few times to show you the
other methods okay
the eye and ideas inference we can draw
conclusions from the context if we don't
know what unconventional means we can
take a look at the rest of the sentence
or other nearby sentences to figure it
out
being unconventional seems to make good
all different from other researchers she
hadn't yet been to college which implies
that the rest of them had that doesn't
give us a full answer but it does tell
us that she's different somehow so I
think that unconventional might mean
different than what is normal and
because I'm making an inference about
this words meaning I'll want to keep an
eye out for it in other places to see if
I can confirm or
why is that working definition later d
definition context clues like these will
just give you the definition of the word
in question so a good example of that
would be she was considered somewhat
unconventional among other animal
researchers she hadn't been to college
yet and this made her different and
unexpected different and unexpected is a
great definition for the word
unconventional this style of context
clue occurs when the author expects a
word to be unfamiliar to you and builds
in a guide for you right there in the
text the e and ideas stands for example
and this is somewhere between inference
and definition if the author describes
Goodall as unconventional they'll go on
to talk about something unconventional
that Goodall did she was considered
somewhat unconventional among animal
researchers for one thing she hadn't
been to college yet so this is very
similar to that initial sentence except
for the transition phrase for one thing
which is a way to set up examples
antonin and antonyms is a word whose
meaning is the opposite of another word
like how Knight is the opposite of day
or how love is the opposite of hate so
if there's an example in the text of
what Jane Goodall was not we can use
that to figure out what she was so let's
say the passage said Goodall was
unconventional she didn't conform and
she wasn't ordinary there we have two
antonyms and our answer similarly
synonym just means right another word
with the same meaning similar to a
definition Jane Goodall was
unconventional she was a nonconformist
she went against the grain you can see
that I had to rewrite the sentences each
time to apply to each context clue
strategy which shows me that you won't
find all five context clues every time
you need to search for a words meaning
you need to find the approach that makes
the most sense in context see how to do
that
uh-huh and failing that you can always
look up an unfamiliar word in a
dictionary I love to do that I think
that's great
but I also feel a sense of victory when
I correctly figure out what a new word
means when I've put it together from
context and maybe if I'm still curious I
look it up later and then I turned out
to be right and I'm all like victory at
sea I did it oh and if you work
yes glabrous means smooth and hairless
like a leaf or the skin of a frog
nacreous means shiny and rainbow-colored
like the inside of an oyster shell and
to limb something means to draw the
outline of or to be highlighted in light
you can learn anything David out