Vocabulary Building and Reading Comprehension

The meaning of unknown words which you come across in your reading sometimes can be known by their surroundings, that is, their contexts. The context of the sentence can tell us the part of speech of the unknown word. Using the context of the paragraph to define unknown words can also helpful.

Although it takes practice, it is the easiest and most efficient way to identify words. Often, using the context is the only way to figure out the meaning of the word as it is used in the sentence, passage, or chapter.

Consider the word "bar". Bar is a common word. But without surrounding words, you don't know if it describes soap, a place that serves beer, a sand formation at the beach, a way to lock the door, or...

Readers often have trouble because they identify the literal but incorrect meaning of a word when they should identify the way it was used in the passage. The following sections will give you more explanation and some exercises on how to get help on the meaning of unknown words by checking their part of speech and their place in context.

A. Using The Part of Speech of the unknown word as a help in reading.

One consideration in using the context is to determine the unknown word's part of speech. The words around the unknown word give you clues. Once you know if the word is a noun or if it is an adjective, it often is enough for you to continue reading intelligently without having to stop to look up the meaning of the word. After coming across the word a few more times, you will know its meaning more firmly than if you had just looked it up.