Find the meaning of a word in a sentence

Context changes everything. Everything you read, write, watch, listen to, or do is shaped by context. Think about what it’s like to learn about your favorite author. You probably first read their books with an idea of what it meant. However, once you learned more about the author’s life and the time period they lived in, this probably changed what their writing meant to you. The context of their writing changed what their writing means.

This post on IELTS Reading Skills focuses on some methods to guess/predict the meaning of new/unknown/confusing words. Hopefully, reading this post will guide beginners in IELTS Reading easily to understand how to guess the meaning of such words in a real-test situation.

When you don’t understand a new/unknown/confusing word in a large text, what’s the first thing you do? Most probably you stop reading the text; then you search for a good dictionary and try to find out the meaning. When you are satisfied with the meaning, you come back to read the text. Now, the black magic happens with a lot of people like it always happened with me! You suddenly find that you’ve lost your interest in reading. Taking the ‘Dictionary break’ sometimes costs your attention and you fail to get into the reading again.

Well, how about a different approach to Reading an article? When you start reading a text, you will surely face some new/unknown/confusing words you don’t have idea about. You might be a native speaker of English and still you will face the same problem. Taking help from a dictionary can be a solution but you can’t use a dictionary in an exam situation, can you? Therefore, you need some strategies that may help you predict the meaning of the word. Here, is this lesson, I’ll try to show you some strategies that can help you guess the meaning of such words.

Let’s begin.

1. You don’t need to know every new/unknown word. Sometimes they aren’t needed.

Ask yourself this question: Do I need to know all the words? Let’s take the following sentence as an example:

“By asking people about their experiences of boredom, Thomas Goetz and his team at the University of Konstanz in Germany have recently identified five distinct types: indifferent, calibrating, searching, reactant and apathetic.” (Cambridge IELTS 13 Test 1 Reading Test 2)

Here, in this long sentence, most average English learners have the possibility to get stuck with these 3 words, calibrating, reactant and apathetic. Should you stop reading for that?

OK, let’s try to guess what these words mean in general, not the exact meaning. Do these words belong to a same group? The previous lines talk about boredom and their types. All these three words are the types of boredom. The other two words are known to you, indifferent and searching. Probably, in the next few paragraphs, there will be some sort of discussion on each type. So, for now, you don’t need the exact meaning. Have you got my point? A long list of games may have peculiar names of games like Molkky which you don’t need to know; a game is a game, isn’t it?

2. Parts of speech can help to find out the meaning:

It’s easy to find a meaning, not exact but close at least, if you know what part of speech it belongs to. Most often candidates and students of IELTS test get jammed to an unknown word without considering much about the part of speech. In most cases the new words are nouns, adjectives, verbs or adverbs. If you know the functions of these parts of speech, it becomes easier to guess a meaning.

Let’s look at this example sentence:
“Fish were a vital commodity in growing towns and cities, where food supplies were a constant concern. . ..”. (Cambridge IELTS Series 8 Reading Test 2)

Let’s suppose you don’t know the word commodity in this text. Let’s try to guess it from it’s part of speech. What kind of part of speech is it?

The sentence says, “Fish were a vital commodity . .. .” The preceding words are ‘a’ and ‘vital’. ‘a’ is an article and ‘vital’ is an adjective. Therefore, to maintain grammatical rule, the next word has to be a noun (article + adjective + noun). As the word commodity is a noun, we can guess the meaning as a thing or person (a noun is always a thing or a person). Now, the sentence tells us that it is about fish and fish cannot be a person. So, we can guess that the meaning of commodity should be something. So, we can read the sentence like this: “Fish were a vital something. .. .   ..”

3. Root words can direct you to the meaning:

This is another easy way to find the meaning of a confusing/unknown word. Take this example:

“… . . Extreme high performance sports may lead to optimal cardiovascular performance, but they quite certainly do not prolong life . . .” (Cambridge IELTS Series 8 Reading Test 3)

As the word is before the word ‘performance (noun)’, we already know that this new word cardiovascular is an adjective. So, can we guess the root word for this particular word? Let’s dissect the word first:

• cardiovascular = cardio + vascular

So, the root word here is cardio which means heart-related. You may even know other words like cardiology, cardiac, cardiogram, cardiologist, cardiograph; all these word relate to something or someone dealing with heart (body part).

Now, if you read the sentence again, you can guess the meaning better.

“… . . Extreme high performance sports may lead to optimal cardiovascular (or heart) performance, but they quite certainly do not prolong life . . .”

It does the work quite well, doesn’t it?

4. Break down the sentence. You may learn the meaning of the word from the whole sentence.

When you find a very long sentence with some unknown words, don’t panic. You can break down the sentence which may help you find the meaning of the unknown word(s). Let’s have a close look at the following example:

“… At various points in evolutionary history; enterprising individuals within many different animal groups moved out onto the land, sometimes even to the most parched deserts, taking their own private seawater with them in blood and cellular fluids.”  (Cambridge IELTS Series 9 Reading Test 1)

Suppose, you don’t know the meaning of the word ‘parched’. Let’s take a deep breath and break down the sentence. Can you see two commas separating the sentence in three individual parts?

Part 1: At various points in evolutionary history; enterprising individuals within many different animal groups moved out onto the land,

Part 2: sometimes even to the most parched deserts,

Part 3: taking their own private seawater with them in blood and cellular fluids.

Now, think about the second part only, forget the first and third part for the time-being.

“. . .. . sometimes even to the most parched deserts,. .. ..”

So, here we can see that the text is taking about deserts which are parched. Again, just like in method no. 2, desert is a noun, so, the word ‘parched’ is an adjective. Therefore, this word describes a quality or status of deserts. We know that the most significant status or quality of a desert is that it is a dry place. So, the word ‘parched’ must be something related to ‘dry’.

Now, you can check your dictionary at a later time and find out whether you were correct in guessing the meaning or not. If not correct, you will be close, trust me.

5. Search for clues around: it can be synonyms, antonyms, prefixes, suffixes, anything.

Let’s take a look at the following sentence:

“Hearing impairment or other auditory function deficit in young children can have a major impact on their development of speech and communication, resulting in a detrimental effect on their ability to learn at school.”  (Cambridge IELTS Series 9 Reading Test 2)

Suppose, you don’t know these words: auditory and deficit. Let’s look for other words here, may be some synonyms or antonyms.

First, let’s dissect the word auditory to find out the root word:

The root word for auditory is audio. Does the root word ring any bell? Take a look the first word of the whole sentence. Hearing is synonymous to audio. Thus, the word auditory relates to sound.

Now, let’s have a look at the second word, deficit.

Take a look at the first part of the sentence again:

“Hearing impairment or other auditory function deficit in young children  . .. .”

Can you see the word ‘or’ here? What’s the function of the word ‘or’ here?

According to Cambridge Dictionary, the word or is a conjunction that connects two or more possibilities or alternatives. It connects words, phrases and clauses which are the same grammatical type.

So, we can say that ‘or’ connects two synonymous words.

The phrase ‘Hearing impairment’ has an adjective (hearing) and then a noun (impairment). Here, impairment means a problem.

Now, let’s have a look at the phrase after ‘or’. The phrase is ‘auditory function deficit’. Here, ‘Hearing’ means ‘auditory function’. So, in this text deficit means impairment.

6. Definitions or explanations might help too.

If you know how to find out the definition of a word, you are in luck! No unknown or new words can obstruct your reading of the text.

You can look for different words such as is, mean(s), depict(s), describe(s), refer(s) to, known as, called, named, entitled, deal(s) with, explain(s), suggest(s), comprise(s), consist(s) of etc.

You should also look for asterisk sign (*) or numbers (¹, ², etc.), a hyphen or double hyphen (-, – -), even brackets ( ) with a word too. If you find them, look below or around the text. There should be some sort of footnotes or glossary explaining the word(s).

Let’s have a look at some examples:

“As their name suggests, stepwells comprise a series of stone steps descending from ground level to the water source . . ..” (Cambridge IELTS Series 10 Reading Test 1)

Here, the words suggests and comprise give us the definition of stepwells.

Another example:

“Easter Island, or Rapa Nui as it is known locally, is home to several hundred ancient human statues – the moai.” (Cambridge 11 Test 2 Reading Passage 2)

Suppose here, in this sentence, you don’t understand the words Rapa Nui and the moai. Now, take a close look at the phrase Rapa Nui, you’ll see a definition of the word given just after that; “. . . .is home to several hundred ancient human statues – the moai.”

Again, the explanation or definition of the phrase the moai is given in the same sentence.  Have a look at the sentence again and you will see a hyphen before the phrase the moai. This means an explanation is given just before the hyphen which is “.. .. ancient human statues”.

Here is one more instance:

Take a look at this image of the text taken from Cambridge IELTS Series 10. In paragraph B, you’ll find a word – photosynthesis with an asterisk sign (*). This means the word is explained just below the text. I’ve marked it with a red line.

One final example for your better understanding:

“Silk is a fine, smooth material produced from the cocoons – soft protective shells – that are made by mulberry silkworms (insect larvae).” (Cambridge IELTS Series 11 Test 3 Reading Passage 1)

Suppose, these two word seem confusing to you; cocoons and silkworms. Actually, both the words are explained here. The word ‘cocoons’ is explained within two hyphens “– soft protective shells –“ and the word silkworms is explained within brackets “(insect larvae)”.

So, looking for an explanation or definition around can help you directly.

7. Think about nuance/ connotations of a word: what’s the implied positive or negative?

This technique will be useful for candidates who are already in a good place in Reading or Writing Test and now want to target 8.0 or 9.0.

Connotation refers to the implied meaning of a word. It can be positive or negative. Confused ?  Let’s take a look at some examples:

1. “Alex’s thesis paper looked a bit different in that it constructively criticized the government plan to reduce the number of basic shelters for the homeless.”
2. “Hannah’s dissertation seemed to be different from her classmates’ as it did not follow the basic structure or any writing plan.”

As you can see, both sentences A and B contain the word different. Then why have I used green in A and red in B?

In sentence A the word different implies that Alex’s writing was unique.

In sentence B the word different implies that Hannah’s writing was peculiar.

This is known as connotation. If you can understand connotation in IELTS, you have a great chance to score way better than others. However, it needs a huge amount of practice.

That’s all from me for this post. I hope you now have a better understanding to think about new/unknown/confusing words. If you are already in a good position in Reading, this post may/might help you to get a better score, but if you are seriously in troubles with your Reading test because of unknown words, try these ideas while you do a test of your own and keep the dictionary away from you for a while. I bet you’ll find these ideas useful and effective.

If you still have queries or want to know more about this lesson, hit the messenger button and throw your questions there or mail me at ieltsdeal@gmail.com. I’ll be in touch, I promise.

Click here to learn about IELTS Reading skills: Skimming and Scanning

What is a verbal reasoning word meaning question?

As part of a verbal reasoning test, you are likely to be asked questions relating to the meaning of words. Verbal reasoning assessments are designed to test your ability to read, understand and assess written information to make a reasoned and logical decision to find the answer.

Success in the verbal reasoning test requires good understanding of the language, and this can be assessed in various ways. While in more top-level assessments for roles in management there is more focus on critical thinking, knowledge of word meanings – and the relationships between words – is found in all verbal reasoning tests.

You can find questions relating to grammar, comprehension, analogies, spelling, sentence completion, word swaps and finding new words in a typical verbal reasoning test.

When taking a verbal reasoning assessment, you can improve your score by understanding more words and their meanings. Assessments tend to be easier for native speakers, since they do rely on knowledge of common idioms, precise meanings of words and the structure of sentences. See this guide for further verbal reasoning tips.

Different forms word meaning questions take

There are several different ways that you may be tested on your understanding of word meanings.

Even though words used in this part of a verbal reasoning test are usually in common use, the tests are timed, so the challenge is to answer them quickly. Without the timing pressure, the questions would often be simple to answer.

1) Word definitions

As verbal reasoning tests are usually multiple choice, in a word definition question you will be presented with a word – either in a sentence or on its own – and be asked what it means. You will be presented with a selection of possible definitions.

There is a chance that the word could have more than one meaning, so context might be important. The definitions might be similar to each other, presenting more difficulty.

2) Missing words

In these questions, you will be asked to complete a sentence. Possible words that could be used will be presented in a multiple-choice format.

Common test examples include misspelled words, homophones and antonyms, to make the answer harder. In some tests there may be more than one missing word that needs to be found.

3) Synonyms

Synonyms are a group of words that have a similar meaning, like big and large. In synonym questions, you will be asked to find the synonym for a given word, often presented in a sentence.

The challenge for these questions is that some of the words might seem to be synonyms but are spelled incorrectly, or are homophones of the actual synonym that is the correct answer.

4) Antonyms

Antonyms are words with the opposite meaning – for example, big and small are antonyms. They are presented in a similar way to synonyms, asking you to find the opposite meaning to the given word.

The challenge for antonyms is to understand the meaning of the original word as well as find the opposite. With the addition of similar-sounding words, misspellings and synonyms in the multiple choice answers, it can become even more difficult.

5) Homophones

Homophones are words that sound the same but have different meanings, often with slightly different spellings. They are stumbling blocks for many people in spoken and written language, and provide challenging questions in verbal reasoning tests. An example of this is advise (to provide guidance) and advice (information to help you make a decision).

Homophones are often used in multiple-choice answers to make questions more challenging, so knowing the possible spellings and alternate meanings to similar-sounding words helps you to rule these out as possibilities.

Questions about homophones will often require you to find the correct meaning for the way the word is spelled, and the answers will contain the meanings for the other ways the word can be spelled.

Example word meaning questions

Complete the sentence

Choose the right word to complete this sentence:

“The Black Bear has _____ fur and can usually be found in forests or mountains”

1. course
2. coarse
3. curse
4. cord

This question is an example of where a homophone is included to make answering the question more tricky. The answer is b) as fur can be described as coarse, but the inclusion of the homophone ‘course’ makes it harder.

Find the synonym

Choose the correct synonym for the underlined word in the following sentence:

” To close the door, push it until you hear a click.”

1. near
2. shut
3. open
4. push

This is an example of context being important to find the meaning of a word to answer correctly. Close could mean near or shut; without the supporting sentence it would be impossible to know the right answer.

However, presented in the context of closing a door, we can see that the correct synonym is b) shut.

Find the antonym

Select the antonym for the underlined word in the following sentence:

“The powerful scent of the skunk is the last resort in their defence mechanism. Skunks do not spray unless they feel they have no other option”

1. strong
2. appropriate
3. weak
4. strange

The antonym in this question is obviously c) weak. But there is a synonym included in the possible answers, so make sure that you are aware of what the question is actually asking.

Odd one out

Choose the odd word out:

1. Attractive
2. Handsome
3. Alluring
4. Comfortable

Before working out the word that doesn’t fit, you need to discover the pattern or rule that links the words. In this case, three of the four words are synonyms for the word ‘beautiful’. This means that the odd one out is d) comfortable.

Tips for word meaning questions

There are a number of ways that you can improve your results in word meaning questions in verbal reasoning tests. Some of the tips presented here are important for many types of aptitude tests, too.

Watch out for homophones

There are a number of homophones that come up regularly on verbal reasoning tests, and recognising these can help you to avoid making a mistake with them throughout the tests.

Understand synonyms and antonyms

Many words in the English language that have similar meanings, so understanding the meaning of the initial word is the first step to finding synonyms. Antonyms have the opposite meaning – the most important step is understanding the meaning of the presented word.

Widen your reading

Although the words used in verbal reasoning tests are usually common, learning new vocabulary and reading a wider variety of books, newspapers and journals will expose you to new language, more synonyms and antonyms.

Practice papers

There is no substitute for practice when it comes to preparing for any assessment, and you can find word meaning questions on many verbal reasoning practice tests. Make the most of your practice by working under test conditions: use a timer, and find tests that are from the publisher you need.

Read questions carefully

In the actual assessment, the information that you need will be presented in the question – so make sure you read it carefully. While the questions and answers are mostly easy, with the added time pressure your instincts might be to skim the questions and answers to move through the test faster. However, this could cost your score in the long run.

Read the question thoroughly to make sure you understand what word you are looking for and what words you need to avoid.

Progress
Check – 3

V – 1

I.
Find the word with the same or similar meaning.

Example: dull – c)

                a) original        b) fascinating       c) boring

1. to report

   a) to borrow             b) to inform               c) to explain

2. advertisement

   a) commercial          b) review                c) quiz

3.  headline

   a)  article    
      b) 
title            c) conclusion

4. quality

   a) popular           b) original         c) serious

5. handbook

   a) manual           b) guidebook      c) encyclopedia

6. fascinating

   a) gripping           b) brilliant        c) amusing

II.
Complete each sentence with one of the words or phrases below.

     whenever         wisdom                  tabloids                     events                         celebrate                     prove

                     book               broadcast               issue                         suggested

 1. … contain a lot of photographs 
and have a more sensational reporting style.

2. Smoking is bad. Can you … it?

3. Local newspapers give information on different … happening in the
local area.

4. I’d like to … tickets for a group of students to London.

5. Series is a long drama or comedy or documentary that is … in parts,
usually at a certain time of day.

6. The first … of the newspaper “The Daily Courant” was published in London in 1702.

7. … you ask for help, I’ll help you.

8. My uncle … making green tea as it is very good for the health.

9. Mikhail Lomonosov was known as a man of great … .

10. How did you … the turn of the century?

III.  The word in capitals above each of the
following sentences can be used to form a word that fits suitably in the blank
space. Fill each blank in this way.

Example:  MANAGE

               He is the manager of a popular singer.

1. DAY

  … newspapers are published on
every day of the week except Sunday.

2. COMMENT

  Who is your favourite TV … ?

3. COMMUNCATE

  Pamela thinks that the Internet
is the most useful means of … .

4. CULTURE

  I prefer to read articles about
… affairs in our town.

5. PRINT

  I think CD books will be much
more popular with teenagers of my generation than … books.

IV.
Complete the sentences. Choose the correct variant.

Example: I’ve got a lot of …
(work/ works) to do for the weekend. –

                I’ve got a lot
of  work
to do for the weekend.

1. What  (is/ are) her progress in
English?

2. (Is/ Are) there any news from Andy?

3. Where (is/ are) Granny’s glasses?

4. (Is/ Are) these goods from America?

5. I got a lot of useful (information/ informations).

6. Do you eat much (fruit/ fruits)?

7. I like any kind of (weather/ weathers).

V.
Complete the sentences. Choose the correct variant.

Example:  My mother disapproved of … (to read/ reading)
thrillers. —

                 My mother
disapproved of  reading thrillers.

1. I have never dreamed of (to win/ winning) a competition.

2. My sister always enjoys (to go/ going) for a walk.

3. The angry neighbour told the teenagers to stop (to speak/ speaking)
too loud.

4. Do you think she’ll manage (to pass/ passing) her Maths exam?

5. My mum is always at home. She quitted (to work/ working) last year.

6. The teacher reminded us (to bring/ bringing) some flowers to decorate
the classroom.

7. Linda suggested me (to drink/ drinking) a cup of tea now.