Vocabulary: the Technique

What do you do when you are reading and you find a word that you've never seen before?

Task 1: Discuss with a partner what you do? For example, do you.....
A) Use a dictionary.
B) Ask the teacher.
C) Ask a friend.
D) Completely ignore the word.
E) Try to guess it's meaning.
F) Something else.

If you answered D), you're making a big mistake because it might be an important word.
If you answered A), B), or C), you're also making a mistake because doing these things slows down your reading speed. Sometimes, of course we need to consult a dictionary or ask the teacher, but it's not necessary every time.
If you answered  F), please tell me what it is you do. Maybe you've discovered some super-effective technique for understanding unknown words.

Every day of my life, when I'm reading or doing crossword puzzles, I come across a new English word  and usually I can work out its meaning without interrupting the smooth flow of my reading.

How do I do this?
Well, there are three main ways. Let's see if you already know them.
Task 2: Discuss with a partner what the word 'schmeisser' means. Don't use your dictionaries. Any ideas?
Task 3: Discuss with a partner what the word 'hypothermia' means. Don't use your dictionaries. Any ideas?
Task 4: Discuss with a partner what the word 'braise'means. Any ideas?

Now look at the following sentences.
The bank robber shot thirty bullets from his schmeisser into the policeman. Now do you know what 'schmeisser' means? How did you work it out?
'Hypo-' comes from a Greek word and means 'deficient', 'lacking in' or 'not having enough'. 'Therm' comes from another Greek word and means 'heat'. Now do you know what 'hypothermia' means? How did you work it out?
The chef braised the steak in his favourite saucepan.Now do you know what 'braise' means? How did you work it out?

You've probably worked out that the ways we can 'guess' the meaning of unknown words is .....
1.  From context.
2.  From word parts
3.  From structural clues (grammar).

1. Context is the 'atmosphere' that the other words in a sentence create, and this can help us understand words we don't know. From the sentence above you could guess that a 'schmeisser' must be some kind of gun. Also the fact that the bank-robber shot thiry bullets into the policeman implies that it must be a very quick-firing gun. A schmeisser is, in fact a German sub-machine gun made about seventy years ago.
Task 5: Try another example. What doe the word in italics mean?
The boy had very bad teeth because every day for years he had eaten a large bag of soor plooms.

2.  Using word parts is a very efficient way to discover the meaning of new words. When you are reading in Japanese, I'm sure you often find words that you have never seen before. Howver, if you know the individual kanji that make up the word you can work out what it means, can't you? In English, many words come from Greek or Latin or German or French roots. The word parts these roots form are not too different from kanji. If you can remember what these 'word parts' mean, you can add to your vocabulary very easily.

As an example, what does the word 'telephone' mean? Well, we all know what a telephone is, but do you know the meaning of the word parts? 'Tele-' means 'at a distance' or 'far away', and 'phone' means a 'voice'. So, a telephone is a 'voice from far away'. And what does 'microscope' mean? You've all used them in science classes. 'Micro' means 'very small' and 'scope' means 'see' or 'look at'. So, a microscope helps you 'see very small'. Now you know what a telphone and a microscope are, fill in the table below.

What is a telescope?
'tele-' means
'-scope' means
telescope means

Task 6: Try another example. What doe the word speedometer mean?

3.  If we know the grammatical function of a word, that knowledge can help us understand its meaning. In the sentence above, what part of speech was the word 'braise'? Of course, it is a verb. Then we look at the context in which we find the word.  So, now we know that 'braise' is something that a chef does to steak. Therefore, it must be some kind of cooking technique.
Task 7: Try another example. What part of speech is the word frigid in the sentence below? What does it mean?
Because of the frigid temperatures in the arctic tundra, the soil is permanently frozen and trees cannot grow there.

Now let's try some of these techniques. Move on the next unit: Vocabulary 1