Week 47 MAVO4G Lesson 3 (finding meaning of difficult words + Taboo)

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• mavo
• Leerjaar 4

Dealing with difficult words

Now...let's look at finding the meaning of difficult words

How would you find the meaning of a difficult word BEFORE looking it up in a dictionary?

Example of difficult word in text

‘Police auctioned Exhibit A’

--> Wat was hiervan het gevolg voor de verdachte? 

Reading strategy difficult words

STEP 1--> Important or unimportant?

Ask yourself: Is this word important to understand the text?

Step 2--> unimportant? read ahead

Step 3--> Important? ---> look at the context of the text

- What does the title mean? Is there something on the pictures that could help me?  What kind of text is it? (activate pre- knowledge) 

Copy this from the board!

Example of difficult word in text

‘Police auctioned Exhibit A’

--> Wat was hiervan het gevolg voor de verdachte? 

Reading strategy difficult words

Step 4--> Important?--> have a look at the structure of the word itself

Sometimes you recognise a part of the word already --> For example: Unimportant= you know important. Or irregular, you know regular. 

Step 5-->Important? -->Read around the word--> why?

Because there might be a word that means the same. 

Or a word that is the opposite. 

Or they explain the word in the text a bit further away. 

STEP 5--> Important or unimportant?

Ask yourself: Is this word important to understand the text?

Step 2--> unimportant? read ahead

Step 3--> Important? ---> look at the context of the text

- What does the title mean? Is there something on the pictures that could help me?  What kind of text is it? (activate pre- knowledge) 

Copy this from the board!

Example of difficult word in text

‘Police auctioned Exhibit A’

--> Wat was hiervan het gevolg voor de verdachte? 

Reading strategy difficult words

Step 6--> Important?--> ask someone

If you are practising reading you could ask your neighbour or family what the word means

Step 7-->Important but you don't know? -->Look up in the dictionary!

Copy this from the board!

Example of difficult word in text

‘Police auctioned Exhibit A’

--> Wat was hiervan het gevolg voor de verdachte? 

How do you find a difficult word in the dictionary?

Looking up words in the dictionary

Step 1: what kind of word is it?>verb,noun, adjective? Some words cannot be found in the dictionary (like names of places or persons) and some words will look different (like verbs)

Step 2:  start with the first letter of the word, then second, third letter or more  untill you find the right word. 

For example: "House"> first look "H", then "O", then "U" and so on untill you find the word you need.

Looking up words in the dictionary

Step 3: look at the translations. If there are more translations, the most common one is shown first. Try this one first!

Step 4: check if the translation fits in the text. If not, look at the others untill you find the right one!

What does this word mean?

unambiguous

Now check this sentence

"It is really difficult to find out the meaning of his words. They can mean anything. They are very ambiguous."

Now...do you have an idea about what unambiguous means?

What does this word mean?

maelstrom

Now check this sentence

"He had a very busy job. Moreover, today was an extremely busy day. It was hard to keep track of all the messages that were coming in every minute. You could say he was caught up in a maelstrom information."

Now...do you have an idea about what maelstrom means?