When you don’t know what a word means, ask yourself these questions:
1. Is it an important word?
First, ask yourself if you need to know what the word means. Can you understand the text without knowing the meaning of this specific word?
Yes. If you don’t really need to know this word, just continue reading or listening. You don’t have to understand every single word of the text to understand it.
No. Is the word important? Then ask yourself the next question:
2. Which strategy do I choose?
You can do several things to find out what a word means. For example: you can use the context, use your knowledge of other words, use images and videos, or look it up in a dictionary.