In reading, the worst thing is an interruption. When we are interrupted in reading, our mind will be distracted and we don’t understand the main idea of the article. Because of poor vocabulary, most of the learners stop reading when they meet a strange word to find the meaning of the strange word in the dictionary. This takes time and resists you understand the idea of the article.
Here are 5 tips for you to guess the meaning of strange words in English chat:
1. Check it is a noun or a verb
If it is a proper noun, move on and continue reading. If it is an adverb or an adjective, guess how negative or positive the word is, then move on. If it is the main verb, you may find its meaning.
2. Analyze the strange word
The structure of English words is mixed by some components including prefix and suffix. These 2 components help us recognize the meaning of words. For example, the word “review” has a prefix that is “re” and the main word that is “view”. As we know, “re” means again, “view” means watch; so “review” means watch again. This is a simple example, you can apply this way very effectively to simple words.
3. After analyzing, you still don’t guess the meaning. Let’s read the sentence including that word again, find clues surrounding that word to understand the meaning of that word
For example, you don’t know the word “deserve” in the sentence “First deserve, then desire”, but you see that “first” and “then” mean cause, result. Therefore, “deserve” is the cause of making “desire”. “Desire” means want to have something, so 90 percent of “deserve” means you should have it because of what you’ve done.
4. Ask someone
Actually, when exchanging with another person, you will easily remember it and spend less time reading. When having the answer, you should quickly write it down on paper to review and learn more new words. But being patient in guessing before looking for someone to ask because according to research, when you guess, 90 percent of what you guess is exact.
5. Checking the strange words in the dictionary if you can’t find another way to guess
When checking in the dictionary, you should avoid using an electronic dictionary. The electronic dictionary may be quick but it is helpless. Remember that if you choose a paper dictionary, you have to make sure that you will quickly rotate the reading article, don’t let your mind go away.
Have fun and enjoy Chatting in English.