Welcome back to the English Portal blog! This week, we are going to review one of our reading skills: being able to guess meaning from context. In our introduction to this topic, we focused on standard vocabulary. In another lesson, we focused on guessing the meaning of some different idioms. This week we are going to return to focusing on ‘normal’ vocabulary that is not idiomatic.

Let’s briefly review why it is so valuable for English language learners to be able to guess meaning from context. First, you don’t always have a dictionary, a native English speaker or a teacher with you, so it is important to feel confident in this skill. Obviously, in our 21^st century world, many people often have a gadget that allows them to access the Internet, and, by extension, any online dictionary. However, ‘often’ isn’t the same as ‘always’, and besides, as we noted previously, even if you always have a dictionary, stopping constantly to look up new words can take the fun out of reading or simply slow your progress. Maybe most importantly, possessing this skill gives you the freedom and the confidence to approach a wide variety of different texts.

Let’s do a few examples and then have a look at an exercise!

We can begin with one of our sentences from above.

Example 1:

Obviously, in our 21^st century world, many people often have a gadget that allows them to access the Internet, and, by extension, any online dictionary.

Our focus here is to guess the meaning of the word ‘gadget’. This is a common English word but also one that is not always included in English textbooks.

Our first goal is to determine the part of speech. If you would like to review that topic, definitely check out our previous blog post about parts of speech. Determining the part of speech will be very helpful in guessing the meaning of the word. In this case, we have a useful clue, the article ‘a’ that directly precedes ‘gadget’. We can conclude in this case that ‘gadget’ is a noun because it comes after ‘a’. Remember, however, that this is not always true. Sometimes there could be another word between ‘a’ and the noun, like an adjective. Note this example: ‘She has a red sweater’. In this case, we have ‘a’ + adjective (red) + noun (sweater).

In our example, there isn’t another noun immediately following ‘gadget’, so we can probably conclude that ‘gadget’ is a noun. We can also see that ‘gadget’ is the object of a clause: people (subject) + have (verb) + gadget (object), so we know that a ‘gadget’ is something that people possess. 

It is likely that our most valuable information is the clause that describes ‘gadget’: ‘allows them to access the Internet’. Now we have a lot of context. Only a relatively small group of nouns are things that allow us to access the Internet. In a sense, all of these nouns are the answer to our question. A ‘gadget’ is not one specific item. ‘Gadget’ refers to a small piece of equipment or a device, so gadget (in this context) probably refers to a computer, a tablet or a smartphone. Another clue from this sentence that is useful is ‘21^st century world’. This information implies that ‘gadget’ is something in a modern or technologically-advanced era.

Let’s try another one:

Example 2: 

Shopping and spending habits have changed over the years, and using an outdated marketing strategy could prevent you from increasing your sales.

Having a lot of information is very helpful when guessing meaning from context. Fortunately, we have a quite a bit of context here. Part of speech? We have ‘an’, so maybe ‘outdated’ is a noun. However, if we look more closely, we can see that the next words are ‘marketing strategy’. ‘Strategy’ is a noun, so ‘marketing’ is a type of strategy, and ‘outdated’ is an adjective that describes this ‘marketing strategy’.

Now let’s look at connotation, which, as we noted in an earlier post, is the way that words ‘feel’ to us. What about ‘prevent you from increasing your sales’? Is this positive or negative? Definitely negative, yes? Yes, so this must mean that ‘using an outdated marketing strategy’ must also be negative. From this we can probably guess that ‘outdated’ might not be a positive thing.

What other information do we have? Shopping has ‘changed over the years’. This suggests time moving forward. ‘Changed’ suggests that a situation is not the same. ‘Outdated’ includes the root ‘date’, which also suggests a connection to time. From all these points, we can at least arrive at the conclusion that being ‘outdated’ is similar to being ‘old’ or ‘not current or modern’. We are close. If we go to the dictionary, we will likely see that ‘outdated’ means ‘old-fashioned’.

One more example:

Example 3

I love nonagenarians!

This example is just a joke. We don’t really have any context here, so guessing the meaning from context would be difficult or even impossible. In a case like this, we should recognize that our skill won’t help us as much as we would like.

What if there was some context outside the sentence, though?

Example 3 (expanded)

I went to visit my great-grandmother at her retirement community. We had tea with her friends. I love nonagenarians! They are so interesting to talk to.

Now we might be able to use this reading skill to help us. ‘Nonagenarians’ is the object of the verb ‘love’, and it ends in ‘s’, so we can conclude that it may be plural, especially since the next sentence uses the referent ‘they’. Context? We have ‘great-grandmother’, ‘retirement community’ and ‘interesting to talk to’. ‘Nonagenarians’ might be ‘old people’. Specifically, a ‘nonagenarian’ is a person whose age is between 90 and 99. 

Even though ‘old people’ isn’t as specific as ‘person from age 90 to 99’, ‘old people’ is a logical guess that is close enough to the actual meaning. Remember that making a logical guess is the most important part of this skill. Our goal isn’t necessarily to arrive at a meaning that is identical to the one in the dictionary. We want to reach an understanding that makes the text that we are reading clear to us.

Alright, let’s try a new exercise. Look at the sentences and try to guess the part of speech and meaning of the underlined word. Try to makes some notes on paper and then check your answers. 

Good luck!

1 It was difficult to interview the experienced politician because he had had a lot of practice at evading questions.

2 The post office is easy to find because it is adjacent to the gold statue in the town square.

3 Even though she is only nine years old, she is very intrepid and was not afraid to ride the roller coaster.

4 He decided not to attend the private university in New York City because the tuition was too high.

5 Reading legal documents can be difficult because they are filled with so much jargon.

6 Many people love Michelle Obama because they feel she is the epitome of intelligence and beauty.

7 Although she scrutinized his essay, she could not find a single grammatical mistake.

8 Unfortunately, right now they cannot afford to buy a new car.

9 My grandfather was illiterate because he left school at the age of ten to work on the family farm.

10 His teacher reproached him because of his terrible attendance record.

3

2

1

Answers

1 

Part of speech: verb

Meaning: to avoid

2

Part of speech: adjective

Meaning: near, next to

3

Part of speech: adjective

Meaning: brave, fearless

4

Part of speech: noun

Meaning: cost to attend school

5

Part of speech: noun

Meaning: language used my specific groups of people that is difficult to understand

6

Part of speech: noun

Meaning: perfect or ideal example of something

7

Part of speech: verb

Meaning: examine very carefully

8

Part of speech: verb

Meaning: be able to purchase

9

Part of speech: adjective

Meaning: unable to read

10

Part of speech: verb

Meaning: criticize someone

Remember, even if your answers are not exactly the same, the most important thing is that your answers are logical.

To see more detailed definitions and additional examples, have a look at one of these dictionaries:

Meriam-Webster:

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

Cambridge:

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

We hope this has been helpful in reviewing how to guess meaning from context. A good goal moving forward is to try to read in English for a general understanding of a text without looking up as many words as you might want to. Finally, since not all reading you might do in English is enjoyable, try to find something in English to practice reading that is fun for you! Good luck!

Today on our English blog, let’s combine two of our recent topics: idioms and context. In our first post about idioms, we saw that idioms have meanings that are different from the meanings of their individual words, and in our post about guessing meaning from context, we learned that the information in a text can be very useful when we are trying to understand unfamiliar words and expressions. We are now ready to combine these topics so that we can kill two birds with one stone!*

“Kill two birds with one stone” is an idiom that uses elements of nature: “birds” and “stone”. Let’s have a look at some other idioms that use words related to nature, and try to guess the meanings based on the context. Remember, when we make our guesses, it’s not so important that they are always 100% accurate. That is our goal, but right now we are trying to make sure that our guesses are logical.

Here’s an example to get us started:

It’s difficult to talk to Emily because she always has her head in the clouds. I wish she would focus!

Our idiom: head in the clouds

Let’s look at the context. Remember that context can help us understand the connotation of a word or phrase, which is how the word or phrase feels. Based on this situation, do we think that ‘head in the clouds’ is a positive thing or a negative thing? Maybe it isn’t horrible, but it doesn’t really sound positive. The person who is speaking in this situation sounds like they are a little frustrated or annoyed, so we can probably guess that ‘head in the clouds’ is not very positive.

What about the actual meaning? Which information can help us guess the meaning of the idiom?

We have:

‘hard to talk to Emily’

Why is it sometimes hard to talk to people? Maybe they are not friendly. Maybe they don’t listen very well. Maybe they are always in a hurry. There may be other reasons as well, but this is how we can approach this process, by thinking about possible ways to explain the information that we have.

We also have:

‘I wish she would focus’

Ok. Now we have some more useful information. Emily has trouble focusing. Maybe she is tired a lot. Maybe her mind moves quickly from one idea to another. We can see from this information that Emily cannot always concentrate very well on the topic that she needs to focus on. She is not always thinking about what is happening in this moment. She is thinking about other things. This is one definition of this idiom. For more examples, have a look at this link.

Try to use these strategies when you look at each of the situations in our exercise. 

Ok, here we go!

Part A

Let’s start with a few examples that have quite a lot of context. For numbers 1-5, use the context to make guesses about the meanings of the underlined idioms. Try to make some notes (on real paper if possible!) about your guesses.

1  

Idiom:  beat around the bush

Sentence:  David is always beating around the bush. He needs to just say exactly what he wants to talk about.

2  

Idiom:  tip of the iceberg

Sentence: They found out that the politician lied about his academic record, but this is probably just the tip of the iceberg. It seems like he probably lied about a lot of other things too.

3

Idiom:  nip something in the bud

Sentence: We really need to nip this in the bud. If we let Tommy behave like this when he is six years old, it will get much worse when he is a teenager.

4

Idiom: a breath of fresh air

Sentence: Wow, Soya really is a breath of fresh air. He is so polite and respectful compared to most people who you meet!

5

Idiom: out of the woods

Sentence:  Well, that is good news, but we’re not out of the woods yet. Let’s wait and see if the project continues to go well. There are still more problems that we need to solve.

Now, for numbers 6-10, let’s try some examples that don’t have as much context to help us.

6

Idiom: neck of the woods

Sentence: Emad, what a surprise! What are you doing in my neck of the woods? 

7

Idiom: a stick in the mud

Conversation:              

Roger-I don’t want to go to take a yoga class.

Chelsea-Come on! Don’t be such a stick in the mud!

8

Idiom: take a rain check

Sentence: I wish I could go to dinner with you tonight, but I have to study. I’ll take a rain check!

9

Idiom: break the ice

Sentence: I get uncomfortable when I meet new people. I’m really no good at breaking the ice.

10

Idiom: freak of nature

Sentence: Shohei Ohtani is a freak of nature!

You can check your answers in:

3

2

1

1 avoid talking about what is really important

2 a small problem that you can see; in reality, the problem is bigger, or there are many problems

3 stop something before it becomes bigger or worse

4 someone or something that is positive and exciting compared to other people or things

5 free from danger or problems

6 area or neighborhood

7 someone who doesn’t want to try new, fun or different experiences

8 decline an offer but hope to accept a similar invitation later

9 make people who are meeting you for the first time feel relaxed

10 a person with unusual or amazing (often athletic) abilities

Part B

Now, let’s try to put the idioms from Part A into some different sentences:

1  I don’t come to this ____________________ very often. It’s a long drive from my home.

2  My car is leaking oil, but that’s just the _____________________. I also need new tires, a new windshield and there is some problem with the electrical system in my car.

3  You should see this new basketball player from France! He’s a ____________________!

4  Let’s not _____________________. We don’t have a lot of time to talk, so let’s get to the point.

5  Our house didn’t get hit by the tornado, but we’re not ___________________ yet. There will probably be many more tornados this summer!

6  I can’t go to the movies with you this weekend. I’ll __________________.

7  Pat is really good at __________________ when he goes to parties. He can make new people laugh so easily!

8  Come with us! Don’t be a _________________. I have heard that this new Thai restaurant is amazing.

9  I am so glad that I started meditating. It’s like a _____________________ when I start to get tired during the afternoon.

10  We need to _____________________. If we wait, the problem will only get worse.

Now double-check your answers. For each idiom, decide if the situation in the example sentence in Part A has a similar feeling to the situation in the sentence you chose in Part B.

Answers:

3

2

1

1 neck of the woods

2 tip of the iceberg

3 freak of nature

4 beat around the bush

5 out of the woods

6 take a rain check 

7 breaking the ice

8 stick in the mud

9 breath of fresh air

10 nip it/this/that in the bud

We will have more exercises like this in the future. If you have any questions, please post them in the comments section below! See you next time!

*Based on the context, what do you think “kill two birds with one stone” means?

Here’s the answer:

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/kill-two-birds-with-one-stone?q=kill+two+birds

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!