Which vocabulary strategy uses the words surrounding an unfamiliar term to infer its meaning?

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Multiple Choice

Which vocabulary strategy uses the words surrounding an unfamiliar term to infer its meaning?

Using the words around an unfamiliar term to figure out its meaning is context clues. When you read, you look for hints in the surrounding sentence or nearby sentences—like a restatement or quick definition in apposition, a synonym or antonym that signals meaning, or an example that shows what the word means. These clues connect what you already know to the new word, helping you infer its sense without stopping to look it up. For example, if a passage says, The meadow was arid, with almost no rainfall, making plants scarce, you can infer that arid means very dry because of the description of little water. This strategy is distinct from ideas like semantic feature analysis, which groups words by shared attributes, syntactical cues, which rely on grammar, or anticipation guides, which prepare readers before they encounter the text rather than help infer a single term’s meaning from context.

Using the words around an unfamiliar term to figure out its meaning is context clues. When you read, you look for hints in the surrounding sentence or nearby sentences—like a restatement or quick definition in apposition, a synonym or antonym that signals meaning, or an example that shows what the word means. These clues connect what you already know to the new word, helping you infer its sense without stopping to look it up. For example, if a passage says, The meadow was arid, with almost no rainfall, making plants scarce, you can infer that arid means very dry because of the description of little water. This strategy is distinct from ideas like semantic feature analysis, which groups words by shared attributes, syntactical cues, which rely on grammar, or anticipation guides, which prepare readers before they encounter the text rather than help infer a single term’s meaning from context.

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