Confronted with texts, language learners may be stuck by shortage of vocabulary inventory and thus be unable to understand what texts are about. The first thing that a learner does to understand a difficult word is to look it up using the nearest dictionary. There are however techniques learners may use to get the meaning of such vocabulary items. One of these techniques is guessing meaning from context.

No matter what level our students are in, they will often come across difficult words in texts they are exposed to.

Guessing meanings of unfamiliar words is a strategy which is worth developing. Guessing the meaning of unknown words from the context is really a very useful reading strategy. This strategy is also called:

What is reading for gist?

Gist is the overall meaning, the core idea, the main idea of a spoken or written discourse. When we take a quick look at a written text to establish its genre and the main message that its writer means to get across, we're reading for gist.

A text can provide readers with lots of clues that help readers quickly establish what it's all about. These needn't be just the words. A quick glance at the arrangement – densely written columns, for example – can tell us that we're looking at a newspaper article, even when it's been reproduced in an exam paper. This texts explains what reading for gist is.

This reading strategy is also known as:

As students progress through school, they are asked to read increasingly complex informational and graphical texts in their courses. The ability to understand and use the information in these texts is key to a student's success in learning. Successful students have a repertoire of strategies to draw upon, and know how to use them in different contexts. Struggling students need explicit teaching of these strategies to become better readers.

The strategies referred to in this text are:

That naughty child has been ...... from three different schools for bullying.

The verb that completes the sentence above correctly is:

Peter is Fay's best friend. He smokes a lot.

What should Peter do?

He should ...

Choose the verb that completes the sentence above correctly:

“Fay, what are you going to do on your next vacation?

I'm going ...”

The verb that completes Fay's answer correctly is:

Choose the verb that completes the following sentence correctly:

Fay was studying English last night when suddenly the lights ...

Choose the verb form that completes the sentence below correctly:

Fay was late for school yesterday.

When she arrived at school, the final test ...

Fay studies in a British school.

She believes that .... teachers aren't strict enough.

Teachers should help .... students to get better grades.

The pronouns that complete the sentences above, respectively, are:

“They are rebuilding all the Finnish schools” in the passive voice: