Intermediate Reading

Guessing Meaning from the Context

What is context?

It is the sentence or sentences around a word. The context can tell you a
lot about a word. These exercises can help you learn about context. Some
words are missing in each story. You must use the context to find the right
words. First read the story. Think about the context for each missing
word. Then look for the right words.

Example:

Mara Milvaney is 36 yearsold. Mara and her family live in a small _______
in Australia.
What is the missing word?

horse meat girl town yard

The missing word is town. It is the only word that is good for this
context. A family does not live in a horse, a meat, a girl, or a yard.

Guessing Word Meaning

Context can help you understand new words. You read the
context (the sentences) around the new word. Then you make a guess
about the meaning. In these exercises, you can learn to guess from the
context. When you are doing the exercises, do not use a dictionary. Do not
ask your teacher or your classmates. After you finish each exercise, you
can check the meanings. Then you can use a dictionary or ask your
teacher.

Example:
1. We have a little white cat. She is always hungry. We give her
milk in a bowl on the kitchen floor. She drinks all the milk in a
very short time. Then she wants more!

What is a bowl? It’s a large cup

Guess meaning from the context

When you encounter an unfamiliar word, a good strategy is to infer (or

guess) its meaning from the context. You may not always be able to infer
an exact meaning, but you can often get the general meaning—enough to
continue reading with understanding. You can benefit from this strategy in
three ways:

• It allows you to continue reading and stay focused on the ideas in the
text.

• It helps you develop a more complete understanding of the word and the
way it is used.

• It helps you remember the word in the future.

Obviously you do not have a dictionary in the exam so there are likely to be
a lot of words from the reading text that you do not understand and you
cannot check.
If you come across a word you do not understand, then you cannot spend
a lot of time working out its meaning because you only have 20 minutes for
each reading.

Therefore, guessing meaning from context is necessary.

This means work out what it means (or have a good guess at least) from
the words that are around it and from the topic of the paragraph.

Take a look at this example:

It had been raining hard through the night so the ground was saturated.

What does 'saturated' mean?

You may already know, but if you do not, you should be able to have a
good guess from the rest of the sentence.

It had been raining which means the ground must be wet. It was raining
'hard' so this means the ground is probably very wet.

saturated = completely wet

By doing this you are guessing meaning from context and you should try
and use this technique for words you do not know.

It may not always be clear from the actual sentence and you may have to
look at other sentences around the word.

However, only do this for words that seem important for an

understanding of the text. If it looks like they are not, then leave it and
move on with the reading. You probably won't have time to do it with every
word, especially if you are at a lower reading level.

Guidelines for Inferring Meaning from the Immediate Context

• Analyze the way a word is used in a sentence. What part of speech is it
(noun, verb, adjective, adverb, etc.)?

• Look at the words that are used with it. These often help determine
meaning. For example, if it is an adjective, what is the noun? If it is a verb,
what is the subject?

• Think about the topic and the meaning of the sentence. How does the
word fit in?

Example:
Follow the guidelines above to infer the general meaning of the
underlined word in each of the three sentences below. Then write the
inferred meaning (in English or another language). Do not use a
dictionary.

The president's spokesman said that it was too early to comment on the
outcome of the meeting. One unfortunate outcome of the elections was
that both parties were weaker than before. The outcome of hospital-based
treatment was clearly better than home-based treatment.

Inferred meaning: the result or effect of something

Using Context to Choose a Dictionary Definition

If you are able to infer the general meaning of a word from the context, you
can make better use of the dictionary. In fact, many words have more than
one definition and you need to choose the most appropriate one. For
example, the word laugh (as a verb) has eleven different definitions in the
Longman Advanced American Dictionary. Definitions for the word get cover
three pages!

Inferring the Meaning of a Word in a Paragraph

Beyond the immediate context of the sentence, you can also find clues to
the meaning of an unknown word in the larger context of a whole
paragraph. In the following exercises you will practice inferring meaning
from a whole paragraph, with a nonsense word in the place of a real word.

Example:
Read the following paragraph and answer the questions about the
underlined nonsense word.

As the harmful effects of mropping on health have become widely

known, many cities and some countries have passed laws that limit where
it is allowed. In many places, mropping is no longer permitted in
restaurants and bars. Owners of restaurants and bars were against the
laws because they believed that their businesses would suffer, but that
happened only in the first few months. After that, business returned to
normal. The laws have also had another positive effect, apart from making
the air cleaner for everyone: More people have given up mropping
altogether.

a. What part of speech is it? noun

b. What words are found around it? effects of mropping, mropping is no

longer permitted, more people have given up mropping

c. What word or phrase could replace it? smoking

Using the Larger Context to Infer Meaning

Sometimes you cannot infer the meaning of an unfamiliar word by using

just the sentence or paragraph in which it appears. You need to read more
of the surrounding text to look for clues to its meaning.

Guidelines for Using the Larger Context to Infer Meaning

• Determine the part of speech.

• Look at the words that are used with it.

• Think about the meaning of the sentence and the topic of the passage.

• Notice if the word is repeated elsewhere in the passage or if the writer

has used any synonyms (words with the same meaning) or antonyms
(opposites).

• Look for an explanation or definition of the word somewhere else in the

passage (especially in a textbook).

• Infer an approximate meaning of the word.

• Read the sentence with your meaning instead of the original word. Does
it make sense? If not, check steps 1-5 again (or look in a dictionary!).

Techniques for guessing

Texts are often full of redundancy and consequently, students can use the
relation between different items within a text to get the meaning. Our prior
knowledge of the world may also contribute to understanding what an
expression means.

1. Synonyms and definitions:

 Kingfishers are a group of small to medium-sized brightly colored
birds
 When he made insolent remarks towards his teacher they sent
him to the principal for being disrespectful

2. Antonym and contrast

 He loved her so much for being so kind to him. By contrast, he
abhorred her mother

3. Cause and effect

a. He was disrespectful towards other members. That’s why he was
sent off and penalized.
 4. Parts of speech
a. Whether the word is a noun, a verb, an adjective or an adverb,
functioning as a subject, a predicate or an object.
Example:
Trojan is an example of a computer virus

5. Word forms (the morphological properties of the word)

a. Getting information from affixes (prefixes and suffixes) to
understand a word. Examples: dis- (meaning not), –less (meaning
without)…

6. General knowledge
 The French constitution establishes laïcité as a system of
government where there is a strict separation of church and
state.


These techniques help students get the meaning of words or at least

narrow the possibilities. If need be using the dictionary should be the last
resort to fine tune the understanding of a vocabulary item.

References

https://www.myenglishpages.com/blog/guessing-meaning-from-context/

https://www.ieltsbuddy.com/guessing-meaning-from-context.html

Mikulecky, Beatrice S. and Linda Jeffries. (1998). Reading power. Second edition. NY:
Pearson Education.
Mikulecky, Beatrice S. and Linda Jeffries. (1997). Basic Reading Power. NY: Pearson
Education.