Definition: The P.G. Wodehouse Vocabulary Quiz
Vocabulary Quiz on the "I Have a Dream" Speech by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Information (such as a definition, synonym, antonym, or example) that appears near a word or phrase and offers direct or indirect suggestions about its meaning.
See also:
Context-Clue Quizzes:
Examples and Observations:
- "So, as I heard the same words again and again properly used in different phrases, I came gradually to grasp what things they signified."
(Saint Augustine, Confessions, 400) - "There was the equalitarian phase, which is what is happening in the book, where boys and girls are the same."
(Martin Amis quoted by Stephen Moss in The Guardian, Feb. 1, 2010) - Types of Context Clues
Context clues come in various forms. They may be- a definition of the word embedded in the text
The factory supervisor demanded an inspection, which is a careful and critical examination of all of the meats processed each day.
- a synonym or antonym in a word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph around the word
The boxes weren't exactly heavy, just cumbersome, unlike the easy-to-carry bags with handles.
(Here cumbersome can be figured out from its antonym, easy-to-carry.) - an example that helps define the word
The builder decided that the house could be built on a number of sites, for example, along a wooded path, near the ocean, or atop a mountain.
- a restatement of the word or idea
Gary Paulsen writes books that appeal, or are of particular interest, to young adult readers.
- a definition of the word embedded in the text
- "All in all, the descriptive research on learning from context shows that context can produce learning of word meanings and that although the probability of learning a word from a single occurrence is low, the probability of learning a word from context increases substantially with additional occurrences of the word. That is how we typically learn from context. We learn a little from the first encounter with a word and then more and more about a word's meaning as we meet it in new and different contexts."
(Michael F. Graves, The Vocabulary Book: Learning and Instruction. Teachers College Press, 2006) - "[T]here are significant limitations on any attempt to [teach vocabulary] by focusing on context alone. First, of all there are the limitations stemming from the uninformative nature of many contexts. Also, we are not convinced that teaching students detailed information about types of context clues (e.g., appositives) is an effective use of instructional time."
(S. A. Stahl and W.E. Nagy, Teaching Word Meanings. Routledge, 2006)
