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Guess Meaning From Context

This week in our English blog we are going to focus on reading skills. One of the most important reading skills is the ability to guess the meaning from context when we encounter new or unfamiliar words. What does this mean? What is context? Context is information that helps us understand other ideas.

Why is this so important? There are several reasons. First, you might not always have access to a dictionary. Second, constantly stopping to use a dictionary can take the enjoyment out of reading. Also, the definition you find in the dictionary might not be the same meaning that goes with the word in the particular context that you have encountered it. Finally, sometimes words are used in creative, informal or idiomatic ways and we need to use our imagination and powers of deduction to truly understand!

Let’s try a few examples to help us practice guessing the meaning from context. Believe it or not, this can be kind of fun sometimes. Try to think of it like solving a puzzle! Let’s look at one word in several different contexts.


Example 1: That man is nefarious.

Ok. Our first piece of vocabulary is: nefarious. The first example does not have a lot of context, but let’s examine it. What do we know? Let’s remove the word and only look at the context:

That man is _________________.

Ok. We have a noun. What is the noun? “Man”. It also looks like “man” is the subject of the sentence. We also have “is”, which is the verb “to be”. We can think of the verb “to be” sort of like “=” in math. 

So… the man= ___________. 

Hmm. What is the man? It’s time to use what we learned in our earlier post about parts of speech. We can use this context to guess the part of speech of the word “nefarious”. 

The man is nefarious.

Based on this context, “nefarious” is probably a noun or an adjective.

For example, we could have a sentence that is similar to our example in which we use either a noun or an adjective, like this:

The man is a doctor.

                      (noun)

The man is happy.

                (adjective)

Because our example doesn’t have an article, like “a”, maybe “nefarious” is not a noun. Let’s guess that it is an adjective. This is probably all the information that we can reasonably deduce from this example. Let’s look at the vocabulary in another context.


Example 2:     Some people feel that big corporations are very nefarious.

We have more information in this second example. Instead of the subject “man”, we have the subject “big corporations”. We also have an adverb, “very”. This probably confirms that “nefarious” is an adjective and that the adverb “very” is modifying it.

Some people feel that big corporations are very nefarious.

Our new subject is also a little more specific than “man”.

Corporations are companies, and we are talking about big companies here. What adjectives do we think of when we think of big companies? Some possibilities are: rich, complex, powerful, etc.

We are getting a little closer to our meaning now.

Let’s add some more context to the second example.


Example 3:     
Some people feel that big corporations are very nefarious because they hurt the environment and do not pay their employees enough money.

Alright, now we have a lot of information: 

“Hurt the environment”

“Do not pay their employees enough money”

Are these ideas positive or negative? They sound pretty negative. Now we have arrived at another important idea that we need to consider when we try to guess the meaning of vocabulary: connotation. Connotation means the way that wordsfeel.

Words often have positive or negative feeling. Sometimes they don’t feel positive or negative. Sometimes we call this feeling neutral.

What about “nefarious”? Based on our new information, it seems to have a negative connotation because we are talking about hurting the environment and not paying workers enough money. 

Ok. It’s an adjective. It describes companies. It is negative. Now we can probably make many guesses:

bad                  terrible              
heartless        greedy            
evil                   awful  


Let’s stop here for a moment and emphasize something: when you guess the meaning of new vocabulary from context, your guess doesn’t always need to be 100% accurate in order for you to understand the general idea of the reading passage. Your guess needs to be logical. Using this as a guide, all of the words above are pretty good guesses for the meaning of “nefarious”.

For the record, the word that comes closest from our list is the word “evil”.

We can use “nefarious” to describe things like: ideas, activities, companies, governments, politicians and movie villains!

Now that we have followed the process for guessing meaning form context, let’s practice by trying another vocabulary word. For this example, let’s focus on the word “beam”.


Here is our new context:

Beatrice and her parents are beaming in the photo because Beatrice had just won the school spelling bee.

Remember:    

-consider all of the context in the sentence

-use the context to determine the part of speech of the word

-decide what kind of connotation you think the word has

Now make your guess!

We hope that this post has been helpful in understanding how to guess meaning from context. Here are two links to dictionaries with definitions of the word “beam”. This word has many meanings. Try to match your guess with one of the meanings that the dictionaries have.

Meriam-Webster:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/beam

Cambridge:

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/beam

Try to practice these strategies for guessing meaning from context the next time you are reading in English! 

In a future post, we will explore more strategies for guessing the meaning from context when reading new vocabulary!

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Reading Skills
English Pronunciation

Understand Voiced Sounds and Voiceless Sounds

For the first time on our English blog, let’s talk about pronunciation. English pronunciation is an important and sometimes challenging part of learning the language. You might think it will be difficult to improve pronunciation by reading, but if we use the correct vocabulary, we can definitely make pronunciation make more sense. Today we’re going to talk about our voice, and specifically, we’re going to talk about sounds that use our voice (voiced sounds) and sounds that don’t use our voice (voiceless sounds).

What do we mean by our “voice”? We are talking about vibrations. Some sounds make our throat vibrate and other sounds do not.

Let’s use two creatures in nature to help us understand voiced and voiceless.

Let’s use an insect: a bee.

Let’s also use a reptile: a snake.

The first sound in “bee” is /b/.                                            

The first sound in snake is /s/.

/b/ is a voiced sound. This may sound silly, but you can feel this if you put your hand on your throat and say /b/. You can feel your throat vibrating, so the sound /b/ is voiced.

Now try the first sound in snake, /s/. If you put your hand on your throat and say /s/, you do not feel your throat vibrating, so this sound is voiceless.

We can also think about the sounds that these creatures make.

When a bee flies, it sounds like this: “bzzzzzzzz”   

When a snake hisses, it sounds like this: “ssssssssssss”

Let’s try again. Put your hand on your throat and make a sound like a bee: “bzzzzzzzz”          

You can feel your throat vibrating because the sounds /b/ and /z/ are voiced.

Now put your hand on your throat and make a sound like a snake: “ssssssssssss”

You don’t feel your throat vibrating because the sound /s/ is voiceless.

Ok. Why is this so important? We need to understand the difference between voiced and voiceless sounds because some pairs of words only have small differences, and sometimes these differences are just between voiced and voiceless sounds. In addition, when you make these sounds, your mouth, teeth and tongue are in the same position.

Let’s look at an example:                
big                 and                 pig
/b/                                         /p/

Listen:

We make the sounds /b/ and /p/ by pressing our top lip and our bottom lip together and then releasing them. Like this:

Listen to the sounds. First you will hear /b/ three times, followed by /p/ three times.


The only difference is that the /b/ sound uses a vibration and the /p/ sound only uses air.    

Practice pronouncing the two sounds with your hand on your throat. Make sure that your throat only vibrates when you are pronouncing the sound /b/. When you pronounce the sound /p/, you should not feel a vibration. You should only hear and feel the movement of air.

/b/ and /p/ are what we call a minimal pair.

Here are some other minimal pairs. The only difference between the pronunciation of these minimal pairs is that one sound is voiced with a vibration and the other sound is voiceless with no vibration.

Here is a very common minimal pair. This involves the sounds /d/ and /t/

do                   two

/d/                   /t/                   

Listen:

In this pair, our tongue touches the top of our mouth near the front, behind our teeth, like this:


The difference is: vibration in one sound /d/ and no vibration in the other sound /t/

Listen to the sounds. First you will hear /d/ three times, followed by /t/ three times.

Another minimal pair happens when the middle of our tongue touches the top of our mouth near the back, like this:


This happens in the sounds /g/ and /k/:

game             came

/g/                  /k/

/g/=vibration

/k/=no vibration

Listen to the sounds. First you will hear /g/ three times, followed by /k/ three times.

Remember to feel your throat! 

Here is another example:                
vase               face                 

/v/                   /f/                   

To make each of these sounds, we press our top teeth down lightly against our bottom lip. The shape of our mouth is the same for both sounds, like this:


With /v/ you should feel your lip and throat vibrating.

With /f/ you should only hear air moving through your top teeth and bottom lip.

Listen to the sounds. First you will hear /v/ three times, followed by /f/ three times.

Let’s try an example that has a minimal pair in a different location of the words:

price               prize

    /s/                   /z/

Here the sounds are at the end of the words instead of the beginning, but the idea is the same. Our mouth is in the same shape, and our tongue is in the same location, behind our teeth, like this:


Try alternating between the two sounds. Pay attention to the position of your tongue in your mouth and feel your throat for a vibration or for no vibration:

/s/      /z/      /s/      /z/      /s/      /z/

Listen:

Your tongue does not need to change to a new position in your mouth. 

/s/ is voiceless (no vibration)

/z/ is voiced      (vibration)

This is the only difference between the two sounds.

This has been a basic introduction to voiced sounds and voiceless sounds in English. The main idea from our post this week is to become aware of some English sounds with vibrations and some English sounds without vibrations. It is also helpful to listen carefully when we hear native English speakers pronouncing these sounds. 

Here is a final tip: one great way to practice pronunciation is in front of a mirror (or using the camera on your smartphone). This will allow you to see the shape of your mouth, including the position of your lips, teeth or tongue. If you are feeling self-conscious* about your pronunciation, it can be very helpful to practice the sounds that are difficult for you when you are alone: driving in a car, walking alone or taking a shower. However, try not to feel embarrassed about your pronunciation. Everyone needs to practice their pronunciation when they learn a new language, so don’t worry!

*https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/learner-english/self-conscious

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Pronunciation
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Say Hello

This week’s post in our English blog focuses on different ways to say hello in English. This should be pretty basic because one of the first things we learn in English is to say ‘hello’. This ought to be simple, right? Hmm. It’s not complicated. It’s just a little strange sometimes because there are actually many (very different) ways to say “hello”.

Let’s have a look!

Ok, yes. The first and most standard way to say “hello” is just…”Hello”.

And then we have the less formal: hi.

What is “formal”?

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/learner-english/formal

How about “informal”?

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/learner-english/informal

There are variations to “hi”, like:      

hiya    
(though you might hear other versions of this)

Then there is also:                             
hey or heyo              

or even 

hey hey

(this one seems to be popular with kids)

You can see what’s happening here. Native English speakers- especially younger generations- will take simple ways to communicate and “spice them up” (make them more interesting).


What else do we have?

We have “yo”.          
This is also very informal.


Then we have one that is a little funny….
”howdy”. 

What is “howdy”? Originally, it was a form of “hello” that became popular in rural areas a long time ago. Most people would think of cowboys or places like Texas when they think of “howdy”. However, now you might hear this greeting just about anywhere, either as a joke, or even as a now “normalized” greeting.


We also have greetings that are connected to time. These are not new, but a lot of times they become shorter, so…

Good Morning becomes:                
Morning!       

Or        

Mornin!

Good Afternoon:                                

Afternoon!

Good Evening:                                   

Evening!        

Or        

Evenin’

So far, these forms of greeting other people are pretty simple. Now we should look at another way to say “hello”: by using questions. I say “using” questions instead of “asking” questions, because with these phrases, we’re not really always looking for information. Here’s an example:

How are you?                                    

Or less formally: “How are ya?”

Yes: “How are you?”

This looks like a simple English question. It has a question word (how). It has a subject (you). It has a verb (are). Easy!

This question can be perplexing* for international speakers of English.

* https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/learner-english/perplexing

This question isn’t really a normal question. It’s just a way to say “hi”.

Here are a few possible situations:

Batman: How are you?  

Joker: I’m good.      

(end of greeting) 


Batman: How are you?        

Joker: Not bad. 

(end of greeting) 


Batman: How are you?

Joker: Fine, thanks!

(end of greeting)



Or how about this situation. Imagine that Batman and Joker work in the same office. They are walking down the hallway, going past each other like this:

————————————————-

                 Batman –>

                                     <– Joker

————————————————-


Here’s the conversation:

Batman: How are you?

Joker (nods his head and smiles)

They both keep walking. End of conversation.

It may seem strange that someone (in this case, Batman) would ask a question and then just keep walking without waiting for a response, but this is not that unusual.


Now let’s look at the really strange one:     What’s up?

For most people there is only one answer to this question, and it looks negative but actually isn’t.

Batman: What’s up?

Joker: Not much.


That’s it. There are, of course, variations, such as: “Nothing” and “Not a lot”.

There are also variations on the form of this so-called question:

What up?

And even:

Sup?

You read that correctly: sup.

“Sup” means “What’s up?”

“What’s up? means “How are you”

“How are you?” means “Hello”

So…

“Sup” means “hello”.

Welcome to English!

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Daily Life
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Review Passive Voice

Let’s review the English grammar that we looked at in our previous post. Here are a couple of practice exercises to reinforce forming the passive voice in English. In the first section, try to rewrite the active sentences in the passive voice.


Part 1

Example:

Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa.         

->         

The Mona Lisa was painted by Da Vinci.


1 People eat pizza in New York City every day.

2 Yesterday, the mechanic* fixed my car.

3 Tomorrow, they will play the game.

4 They have finished the project.

5 Next week, someone is going to paint the house.

6 Right now, they are building the new skyscraper*.

7 Someone was stealing apples from the store.

8 When I arrived, they had already made a decision.


*What is a mechanic?

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/mechanic

*What is a skyscraper?

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/skyscraper




3





2





1




Answer Key

1 Pizza is eaten in New York City every day.

2 Yesterday, my car was fixed (by the mechanic).

3 Tomorrow, the game will be played.

4 The project has been finished.

5 Next week, the house is going to be painted.

6 Right now, the new skyscraper is being built.

7 Apples were being stolen from the store.

8 When I arrived, a decision had already been made.



Part 2

In this section we have to read the sentences and make a decision. Are the verbs in the sentences in the active voice or the passive voice?


1 Professor Green has been teaching at the University since 1989.                 

2 A new movie will be released by that studio next week.

3 I killed the cockroach.

4 She liked the post.

5 The students were introduced to their new teacher yesterday.

6 Our plan is being reviewed by the members of the committee.

7 He took her to the hospital.

8 They will give a prize to the person who solves this equation.

9 By the end of the day, the problem had been solved.
                                                                                                




3





2





1





Answer Key

1 active

2 passive

3 active

4 active

5 passive 

6 passive

7 active

8 active

9 passive


We hope this exercise has been helpful. Leave a comment with any questions that you have!

Review Passive Voice Read More »

Grammar Quizzes
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Use Passive Voice

Today, let’s look at something very scary. It’s called ‘passive voice’.

Before we look at it, let’s consider three ideas

1)  If you can understand active sentences, you can understand passive sentences. I promise.

2)  In the beginning, it is more important to be able to recognize and understand passive voice than it is to be able to write with passive voice

This is because:

3)  We only use passive voice when we NEED passive voice

And in the beginning, you should focus on using active voice, as active voice is more common.

Let’s have a look!


What is passive voice?

Passive voice is when the subject of a sentence receives the action.

Example:                    
The bank was robbed.

Subject: bank

Verb: rob

The bank didn’t rob someone. (in this sentence)

Someone robbed the bank.


Why do we use passive voice?

We use passive voice when:

We don’t know who the original subject is

Example:  The bank was robbed yesterday.

(we don’t know who robbed the bank yet)


Or


We want to focus on the original object

Example: Hamlet was written by Shakespeare.

(the person is focused on the play Hamlet instead of the author William Shakespeare)


Or


The original subject is obvious or not important

The man was arrested.

(we know that the police arrest people)


How do we form the passive voice?

Here is the good news: forming the passive voice is actually very simple. It’s like a math equation. If you can understand the equation, the you just adapt it for any situation.

We use:

The verb “to be” in the original verb tense

+

The past participle of the main verb

Example 1

Active Voice:

People eat sushi in Japan

Verb: eat

Verb tense: simple present


Passive Voice:

Sushi is eaten in Japan.

is

(“to be” in simple present)

+

eaten

(past participle of “eat”)


Example 2:

Active Voice:

Someone has stolen the Mona Lisa.

Verb= steal

Verb tense= present perfect


Passive Voice:

The Mona Lisa has been stolen.

has been 

(“to be” in present perfect)

+

stolen

(past participle of “steal”)

That’s it. Almost.


There is something important that we will explore in a later post, but here is the short version:

A sentence can only become passive if the verb in the original active sentence has an object.

Example 1:                 
He killed the cockroach.                   
The cockroach was killed.

Object? Yes. (cockroach)
So…(passive voice)

Example 2:                 
The cockroach died                          

Object? No. So…(no passive voice)


This has been an introduction. Later, we will explore more situations with passive voice and look more deeply into some situations where passive voice is not possible. For a review of this grammar check out this post that has a grammar quiz!

Try to recognize this grammar topic in your reading practice!

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Grammar