Listening Topic 2: Guessing Vocabulary from Context
Guessing meaning from context is an important skill. Even native speakers often hear unknown words in speech and must try to guess the meaning through context. Those who are successful at this skill usually use many of the other strategies discussed in Advanced Listening to help them in guessing vocabulary: • they make predictions and prepare themselves before they listen ; • they pay attention to the repetition of key words ; • they use their intuition to make inferences; • they pay attention to discourse markers. In addition to the above, here are 3 strategies that will help you make better guesses about the meanings of words you donít know. 1. Use the words and phrases surrounding the unknown word to make quick guesses about its general meaning. For example, in Part 1 of Lecture 5, you hear: Thousands of people [owned slaves] every day all over the world in lots of different periods. Are they simply wicked? I mean, that would be one explanation. The bulk of the population of the world through most of human history have just been bad people, and that’s the end of the story. Obviously, that’s not a very sophisticated historical explanation. You might not be familiar with the word wicked. However, because you know that this word might represent a possible explanation for slave ownersí attitudes, and because the professor repeats this point using the word “bad” instead of “wicked”, you can infer that “wicked” must be an adjective that means something like “bad”. The exact definition usually doesn’t matter; you only need an approximate idea of its meaning. When you are listening, you need to make very fast guesses regarding the general meanings of words. If you stop to think about a word for too long, you will probably sacrifice your understanding of the speaker’s next point. In sum, make your guesses quickly and learn to be comfortable with less than 100% certainty. Also, be confident! You will see from the exercises in Advanced Listening that, with practice, your guesses will usually be right! 2. Recognize when the speaker offers a definition or an explanation of an unknown word. For example, Professor Mahood (Lecture 6) says in Part 1: Magma is just molten rock and it usually has gasses dissolved in it. In this way, she is directly telling us the standard definition of magma. In addition, speakers sometimes define words or phrases using appositives. Here, an “appositive” is any word or phrase ñ a noun, pronoun, noun clause, infinitive phase, prepositional phrase, etc. ñ which stands after another word or phrase without a grammatical link. For instance, we hear: It’s relatively easy, I think, to conceptualize, get an idea of what’s it’s like for slaves.
Here, Professor Morris clarifies the word ìconceptualizeî using the appositive phrase “get an idea of”. Here is another example: In classical Athens – the fifth and the fourth centuries B.C. – probably about a quarter or a third of the total population is slaves brought in from outside the community. In this example, Professor Morris is uses the appositive phrase “the fifth and the fourth centuries B.C.” to explain what he means by “classical” Athens. 3. Pay attention to body language. A speaker’s gestures (movements) will often provide obvious clues to the meaning of words or phrases. For example, Professor Mahood uses hand gestures to clearly illustrate the meaning of words and phrases such as blast apart, flash, and pop the top off. That is, as Professor Mahood is saying the phrasal verb blast apart, for instance, she throws her hands violently into the air; this movement helps show that the meaning of blast apart is ìexplode into pieces. 4. Finally, try to build your vocabulary as quickly and broadly as possible, since the more words you already know, the easier it is to guess unknown words from context. As you complete this course, keep a vocabulary log of the new words and idioms you learn, and review this log frequently.