Unfamiliar words often appear while you're in the middle of a reading session. While consulting with a dictionary, thesaurus or even an encyclopedia are obvious means of learning the meaning of a word, there are also strategies that you can use to decipher the meaning of a word without interrupting your reading session.

Finding the Meaning of Words While You Read

One means of figuring out an unfamiliar word is to look at the rest of the sentence (the context). The meaning of the word is often included, set off by commas or other punctuation. The word may be defined by a list of examples either preceding or following the unfamiliar word. New words are often clarified or compared with familiar words within the context of a sentence or paragraph, even if they're not actually defined. This context is often enough to allow you to understand the ideas being conveyed without interrupting your reading. Words with several meanings can be confusing. By looking at the context in which the word is included, you'll often be able to determine if the word "sand," for example, refers to the beach or the act of smoothing a piece of wood. Also, words often have several connotations, or implied meanings. These implied meanings can also be found within the context of a sentence. For instance, the words "father," "dad" and "old man" all refer to the paternal relative of an individual, but each word differs in its implied meaning. The word itself can yield clues about its meaning. Figuring out the part of speech of a word can help you to decipher its meaning. Breaking the word into its separate parts (e.g., root, prefix or suffix) can help to unlock the meaning of the entire word. For example, the greek roots "ann" and "enni" mean "year" and can be found in words like "anniversary," "annual," "biennial" and perennial. The word "biennial" also has a suffix, "bi," which means "two." By interpreting the root and prefix, a reader can figure out that the word "biennial" refers in some way to two years. Words may migrate from one language to another with no changes or only minor changes in spelling; knowing the meaning of the word in one language can reveal the meaning of the word in another. Be careful, though: False cognates and false friends, or words that look alike but actually have different meanings in different languages, can trip you up. For example, the French word "demande" actually means "request," while the word in English is more of a command.

Source:

ESL Teacher's Board: How To Find The Meaning Of Words As You Read

ProZ.com: How to Convey the Connotative Meaning of a Word Into Another Language

BetterEndings.Org: Common Roots and Word Endings

Resource:

Cuesta College: Learning New Words While Reading

Cuesta College: Recognizing Word Roots and Prefixes