In this lesson, you will learn how to guess the meaning of vocabulary words through context, prefixes/suffixes, and similar-sounding words.
Now that you understand what it means to really know vocabulary, what do you think you should do if you come across a word you aren't familiar with?
While we will come back to this in Lesson 4, introduce your student to an English dictionary online. Learner’s dictionaries are often helpful for ESL students. A good one is Longman Dictionary Online—it includes all aspects of a word, including word family, IPA, simple definitions, examples, phrasal verbs, collocations, grammar points, synonyms/antonyms, and origins.
You can show the student the Longman entry for "break" as an example. It includes all of those elements!
In addition, teach them to ask questions and use you as a resource too:
- What does ______ mean?
- Can you put that another way?
- How do you use ______ in a sentence?
Look at the following highlighted words. Can you guess what these words mean?
- I got abysmal feedback from my manager last week—the clients were not happy with the results of our study.
- The team told their new boss that his predecessor had been a terrible manager who wouldn’t listen to their ideas.
- Abysmal means terrible (sentences that come after em dashes are often clues to meanings of words, especially in TOEFL and TOEIC).
- Predecessor means a person that came before that person. This can be guessed from the hints in the sentence (new) and from the prefix pre- (which means before).
The Longman Dictionary entries for each are linked.
What should you do when you come across a word you don't understand?
- Consider the context. What comes before the word? What about after it?
- E.g.: She is always prompt when it comes to assignments—she gets them done immediately.
- Look at prefixes/suffixes. What are the smaller parts of the word that come before or after the root word?
- E.g.: You aren’t my boss—you’re my subordinate!
- Think about other words that sound or look similar. What is the base word that you see here? In other words, can you find another word that sounds the same?
- E.g.: Employee retention works towards saving a company money in the long run; you don’t need to train new people!.
- Think about the meaning of these words in your first language and look at the similarities and differences in definitions.
- E.g.: Coffee in Japanese means the same thing as it does in English, but mansion in Japanese does not have the same meaning as it does in English!
This section is self-explanatory, but here are a few extra resources if your student seems interested.
- Hints regarding meanings of vocabulary words will often come after commas and dashes. Guessing from the general context is also a good skill to have. Research says that students only need to understand about 80% to get general ideas.
- Here is a list of prefixes and suffixes (https://grammarpartyblog.com/2020/07/21/list-of-prefixes-and-suffixes-w…), and an extra practice resource that may interest your students (https://opentextbc.ca/advancedenglish/chapter/prefixes-and-suffixes/).
- Retention sounds similar to words like retain or even detain. So what could it mean?
- Here is a list of false friends between Japanese and English (https://www.at-it-translator.com/japenglish-wasei-eigo-a-list-of-japane…). Here's one with false friends between French and English (https://www.vidalingua.com/blog/french-false-friends).
Read the following text with your teacher. Can you guess the meanings of the words in italics?
When doing presentations, learn to use your resources properly. Delays that occur because you don’t know how to use your equipment will annoy your audience and throw you off your game. In addition, avoid the use of jargon—you want everyone to be able to understand, whether they're in your field or not.