This document provides guidance on determining the meaning of unfamiliar words from context clues. It explains that context clues like examples, restatements, comparisons, and definitions within a text can help the reader figure out what an unfamiliar word means. The document then provides several examples of sentences with unfamiliar words and asks the reader to use the surrounding context clues to determine the meaning of each word.

1. Vocabulary
Figuring Out Words in Context

2. What context clues can help me?
The disarray in her room made it impossible to
move. Clothes and papers covered the
floor, and book and magazines threatened to
spill from every shelf.

3. What context clues can help?
• Children ran screaming up and down the
aisles, and the man beside me snored loudly. I
tried to block out the noise, but I’m afraid I
couldn’t hear you. Your speech was inaudible.

4. Definition and Restatement
• The cats that live behind our garage are
feral, or wild.
• He studies pachyderm, including the
elephant, rhinoceros, and hippo.

5. Compare or Contrast
• He wasn’t apologetic; on the contrary, he
didn’t seem at all sorry that he was two hours
late.

6. How to Figure it Out!
1. Identify the unfamiliar word. ( I am not sure what
______ means.)
2. Read to see if there is a word that signals that an
example may follow. (I see a phrase such as …)
3. Find the example or example.
4. Ask yourself how the example or examples relate to
the unfamiliar word (Use prior knowledge.)
5. Use this information to figure out what the word
means.
6. Look up the word in the dictionary to verify its
meaning.

7. What is the meaning?
• If we all bear down on the boulder, maybe we
can push it off the road.
• High overhead, the canopy of tree leaves was
so thick that it protected us from feeling a
drop of rain.
• After a few hours, there was nothing left of
the logs in the fireplace except a pile of
small, glowing embers.

8. What’s the meaning?
• Tourists gather around the hot spring every
hour to see the geyser spray hot water and
steam into the air.
• At the point where two medium-size streams
merge, the waters combine to form, rushing
river.
• The fire sucked much of the oxygen out of the
air, making it difficult to breath.

9. What’s the meaning?
• After the storm, the raging river threatened
the lives of the towns people.
• We gathered dry twigs and tinder to start the
campfire.
• The stunt planes dive toward the ground, but
at the last minute they veer back upward.
• The hot summer sun was so withering that all
the flowers turned brown and brittle.

10. What’s the meaning?
• We ate so much cereal last week that now our
supplies of the food are beginning to dwindle.
• A strong wind began churning the pile of
leaves, turning them over and over.