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ELA 5: Finding the Meaning of Words in Context 101 Views


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Description:

Kertucker on over and check out some strategies for finding the meanings of words in context. Yep, it even works for fake words like kertucker.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:04

[Coop and Dino singing]

00:13

Have you ever been lost in a really good book? [Girl reading Harry Potter book]

00:16

It’s the best feeling in the world…until you run into a word you don't know, and you

00:20

remember you’re not really at Hogwarts.

00:21

It might be jarring, but it’s not the end of the world. By taking a look at all the

00:26

stuff around the dreaded unknown word––which we refer to as its context––we can usually [Dino explaining context]

00:30

get a pretty good sense of what the word means, which means we can get back to exploring Hogwarts

00:35

with Harry in no time. So how do we work our context magic?

00:38

Well lucky for us, there's no wand needed…we keep breaking them… [Wizard uses wand to unicorn]

00:42

All we need is this handy-dandy three-step procedure for using a word's context to figure

00:47

out its meaning!

00:48

Step 1: Take a look at the sentence that contains the strange word, then, think about whether

00:52

you kind of understand what that sentence means, even without the odd word.

00:56

Step 2: Take a step back and reread the entire paragraph that contains the strange word.

01:02

Think about whether you understand what's going on in the paragraph.

01:05

Step 3: Based on what you learned in the last two steps, make your best guess about what [Man making a guess of the unknown word]

01:09

the word means.

01:10

Chances are you can pick up on the meaning of the word even if you’ve never seen it

01:13

before. That's the magic of context. Need an example? Abracadabra! [Context falls into a magicians hat]

01:18

We've got one right here.

01:19

Say we're reading a book and we come across this sentence: "The swift gazelle glebobbled

01:24

over the tree to escape the lion’s grasp."

01:27

You might be thinking “Hmm. One of those words doesn’t really make any sense…"

01:31

Well, don’t worry if you don’t know what "glebobbled means." It’s not a real word.

01:35

But let's see if context can give us any hints about what this fake word might mean. First, [glebobbled highlighted red in text]

01:40

let's check out the sentence where "glebobbled" popped up. Close by, we see "swift gazelle"

01:44

and "escaped the lion's grasp."

01:46

Since being swift and escaping both depend on movement, it'd be reasonable to guess that

01:50

"glebobbled" means something to do with movement.

01:53

We don't quite know whether it's running or jumping or using some other kind of lion-evading

01:57

technique, but based on context, we at least have a pretty good idea of what it means, [Gazelle jumps over a tree]

02:01

and that's good enough for us.

02:03

Sometimes, context isn't all that helpful. Say we open up a different book, and the only [Book flicks through chapters]

02:07

thing that chapter three says is: "The gazelle kertuckered."

02:10

Not only is that a really weird chapter, it also contains a really weird made-up word:

02:15

"kertuckered."

02:16

It'd be nice if we could use context to figure out what it means, but… there’s no context.

02:21

All we really know is that kertuckering is something a gazelle does. But gazelles do [Coop explaining the gazelle kertuckers]

02:25

all sorts of stuff: walk, run, jump, breathe, be stinkin’ adorable… [Gazelles in a field]

02:29

So with that in mind, our best bet is a dictionary.

02:32

Sorry to break it to you, but context actually isn’t magic.

02:35

But it's pretty darn close. Like a lot of things, figuring out what words [Context falls into a hat and dictionary appears]

02:39

mean based on context gets easier with practice, and the more you do it, the smoother your

02:42

reading will be. [Man riding a bike rides past and crashes]

02:44

But you should probably own a dictionary, just in case. Even if you don’t use it,

02:48

it’ll impress your houseguests. [Person puts dictionary under a table leg and house guests celebrate]

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