Question

What are the advantages of using context clues as your primary tool/strategy for discovering the definitions of unknown words? What are the disadvantages? Your answer should be at least 250 words.

Answer 1

Context clues can be useful tools for discovering the definition of unknown words. In order to use them, you have to look at the words that surround the one you do not know. These words can give you several clues as to what the meaning of the word most likely is. For example, it can help you discover the part of speech of the word. It can also give you a clue as to whether the word has a positive or negative connotation.

One of the advantages of using context clues is the fact that this allows you to continue your reading with little interruption, as you do not need to look a word up in the dictionary. However, an important disadvantage is that context clues can be interpreted in the wrong way, leading you to a wrong conclusion.

Answer 2

Context clues are supporting sentences for providing information on the meaning of difficult words. Therefore, when we just have a little vocabulary mastery, of course will be directly proportional to the mastery of context clues. For example, when there is a sentence and we do not even understand the meaning of it. We do not know the meaning of each word or we know a little word only, the uses of context clues can be an advantage.

This approach will not be running, as it should. To overcome this problem at least should first increase our vocabulary mastery. By mastering vocabulary well, is expected there will creativity enhancement in word processing, especially relation to the ability to read. In reading, one must have an adequate vocabulary so that he can figure out the meaning of reading's content. Context clues are a combination of reading skills, vocabulary mastery, and creativity. Three of those should go together

Context clues also help in case of polysemeous words. For example the verb "to get" can mean "procure" (I'll get the drinks), "become" (she got scared), "have" (I've got three dollars), "understand" (I get it) etc. Here the role of context clues in determining the meaning of the polysemeous word. A context clue is an approach to infer the meaning of unfamiliar word, which is based on the sentence context. That words mean exactly can be figured out or at least very close to the real meaning.

There are some of disadvantages of context clues, among of them: For beginner reader, it needs more time, The context clue sometime does not sufficient and leads the reader in misguessing, Depend from our background knowledge