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Learning to read
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Word-Attack Strategies: Dealing with unfamiliar words I
     
So, how to deal with unfamiliar words? First of all, some unknown words can be ignored because they do not impede our understanding of the information contained in the text that is relevant to our reading purpose. Secondly, there is quite a number of strategies which can help you guess the approximate meaning of a word you don’t know. The most common strategies are: I. Identifying the KIND of word (part of speech: noun, verb etc.); II. Looking for RESEMBLANCE between the word to be understood and some word that exists in your native language or any other language you know; III. Finding clues to the meanings of unfamiliar words in their IMMEDIATE CONTEXT; IV. Making use of the WIDER CONTEXT of an unfamiliar word to deduce its meaning; V. Analyzing MORPHOLOGICAL STRUCTURE of a word to guess its meaning;
The approach to dealing with unfamiliar words we keep to in this textbook can be summarized in the following diagram:
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Task 1. [individually]
If you are still not convinced that you do not have to read every word of a text to gain an understanding of it, do this task. Try and get the main ideas from the following paragraph where over half of the original words have been omitted.
| Reading __ not __ passive __ __ __ __ reading critically. __ __ __ __ __ __ you have __ different point __ view? __ __ supporting material adequate? Don't accept ___ just because __ __ written down. __ __ possible to improve __ speed __ efficiency __ reading, by learning __ __ __ practising __ __ __ skimming __ scanning. __ reading __ __ __ efficient if __ look closer __ __ __ material before delving into __. __ __ __ __ relevant to __ needs, be critical reader. __ __ argue with __ writer __ __ disagree with __ __ __ view. Take notes. Make __ reading __ active __, __ __ stimulates __ mind __ __ __ makes __ think about your ideas. |
You may want to test your understanding of the above passage by identifying the statements below as True or False:
1. Reading should be a passive activity. True/False?
2. Practising the skills of skimming and scanning helps improve reading speed. True/False?
3. Critical reading involves questioning the writer's point of view. True/False?
4. Critical reading helps you think about your own ideas. True/False?
Task 2. [individually]
| As you can see in the diagram above, the first decision to make when faced with an unfamiliar word is ‘Do I need to know its meaning?’ You can only answer this question if you have a clear purpose in your reading. |
Read the passage below and answer the following questions:
1. How does psychology obtain knowledge?
2. What is behavior?
3. What is mind?
Which of the words in bold type do you need to know to answer these questions?
| B | Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and the mind. This definition contains three elements. The first is that psychology is a scientific enterprise that obtains knowledge through systematic and objective methods of observation and experimentation. Second is that psychologists study behavior, which refers to any action or reaction that can be measured or observed— such as the blink of an eye, an increase in heart rate, or the unruly violence that often erupts in a mob. Third is that psychologists study the mind, which refers to both conscious and unconscious mental states. These states cannot actually be seen, only inferredfrom observable behavior. |
(Saul Kassin. (2002). Psychology. In Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2002. [CD-ROM]. Microsoft Corporation.)
Task 3. [individually, then in pairs]
| The second decision to make when faced with unfamiliar words is ‘Do I need to know its exact or its approximate meaning?’ The best thing to do when you need the exact meaning of a word is to look it up in a dictionary. But most of the time when you read, an approximate meaning is sufficient. The first step in finding the approximate meaning of an unfamiliar word is to identify the part of speech the word is – noun, verb, adjective, etc. This limits the range of possible meanings. You can identify what kind of word it is by noting its position in the sentence, and, where these exist, any clues in the form of the word, for example verb endings. Your knowledge of grammar will help you here. |
In the paragraph below try to identify what part of speech each blank represents. Some clues in the form of the words are given. Taking into consideration what part of speech the word is and the immediate context in which it appears, try to think of a possible word or phrase to fill into each gap. Discuss your answers in pairs.
| C | psychology n. The study of the nature, functions, and phenomena of behaviour and mental experience. The (1)_____________ of the word (see below) (2)_______s that it is simply the study of the mind, but much of modern psychology focuses on behaviour rather than the (3)_______, and some aspects of psychology have little to do with the mind. Many textbooks (4)_________ psychology simply as the study of behaviour, or the science of behaviour, but that too is to exclude much of psychology: the study of cognition, for example, is concerned with behaviour only (5)__________ly, as evidence of mental processes. The establishment of psychology as an (6)__________ discipline, separate from the disciplines of philosophy and biology from which it (7)__________, is attributable to the German psychologist Wilhelm (Max) Wundt (1832 – 1920), who stated in the opening sentence of his book Principles of Physiological Psychology (1873), the first major textbook of experimental psychology: 'The book that I herewith offer to the public attempts to mark out a new domain of science', and who (8)__________ed the first psychological laboratory in Leipzig in 1879. See also psyche. [From Greek psyche soul or mind + logos word, discourse, or reason. […]] |
(Colman A.M. (2003) A Dictionary of Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press)
Task 4. [individually, then in pairs]
| The second step in working out the approximate meaning of an unfamiliar word is looking for resemblance between the word to be understood and some word that exists in your native language or other languages. True Cognates vs. False Friends The words ‘element’ and ‘элемент’ look similar in both English and Russian and they have the same meaning. These words have the same origin and are called cognates. There are some English words that look similar to a word in your own language, but have completely different meanings. They are usually referred to as false friends. e.g. magazine ≠ магазин actual ≠ актуальный Therefore the context in which the word in question occurs should be taken into account. |
Read through passages B and C in Tasks 2 and 3 and underline the words which resemble some words in your native language. Are they true cognates or false friends? Discuss the meanings of these words in pairs.
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Discourse Study: Cohesion I
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| Cohesion is the way in which a language establishes links between sentences (or parts of sentences). Cohesion can be either implicit (achieved through meaning) or explicit (achieved through a range of devices). She had cancer.She died. (implicit) She had cancer and died. (semi-explicit) She had cancer and died as a result. (explicit) There are three main categories of cohesive devices: 1) substitution and reference; 2) ellipsis; 3) discourse markers. In this Unit we will consider the first category. |
| Substitution Writers often use different words in a text to refer to the same thing – the meaning remains the same but the words change. Study the example below: Before accepting information published in a book, you should spend a few minutes examining its structure. The work is likely to be authoritative if published by a publisher who specializes in the subject of the book. The foreword, preface, or introduction will often summarize the purpose of the volume. Work and volume do not signal new topics. They are simply different words for book in this text. If you meet an unexpected change of topic in your reading, look back in the text. The writer may be using a new word for an old topic. Reference Special care should be taken with words like it, he, our, this, those, then, one (as in the wrong one), so, not (as in I think so, It appears not) and comparatives (smaller, same, additional, such, other, etc), which appear meaningless unless we identify which other words in the text they refer us to. It is good tactics, if you find yourself puzzled by part of the text, to look for words of this kind and ask about them the kind of questions exemplified below. You may find that a wrongly identified reference has led you to misinterpretation. They all said the same. Who they? The same as who, or what? In other cases different rules apply. Other than what? Different from what? The answers to these questions have to be found by searching the text and using your common sense and knowledge of the context. |
Task 5. [individually]
Identify the word which is used to refer to psychology in this sentence.
From the person on the street to the professor of anthropology, everybody thinks they know what psychology is and yet within the discipline itself there is an almost complete lack of consensus.
Do you know any other words that can be used to substitute the word psychology?
Task 6. [individually, then in pairs]
Read the passage below. Answer the questions in italics about words which substitute for or refer to other words in the passage.
| D | Psychology is concerned with a wide area of interest. It What? has been defined as the systematic study of animal and human behaviour (observable and mental processes) and covers all kinds of pursuits from making dogs salivate at the sound of a bell to a study of the growth of intelligent behaviour in humans. The term 'behaviour' includes all those aspects What aspects? of human activity which we can observe: in effect it What? represents the outward life of individuals which What does ‘which’ refer to? is public knowledge and which can be noted dispassionately. But behaviour also involves personal experience, which can be studied only by asking individuals to express their feelings and thoughts. For example, frequently we sit motionless while watching television or solving a problem 'in our heads'. Yet our senses and brains are operating or 'behaving'. To discover anything about this internal action What action? we would have to seek out some physiological method of 'tapping'* the nervous system, and also would have to ask the individual about his or her experiences. This What does ‘this’ refer to? method of introspection, attempting to expose the private knowledge of persons by asking them Who? to recount their Whose? conscious experiences, attitudes, opinions or values, is regarded with suspicion by some Who? (for example the behaviourists), but it does constitute a widely used technique in some fields of psychology. * tap (v) = to fit a device to a telephone so that sb's calls can be listened to secretly |
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