Thursday, April 17, 2008

Vocabulary - BTT

I missed last week's Booking Through Thursday but now I'm back from studying and can answer this week's question:

I’ve always wondered what other people do when they come across a word/phrase that they’ve never heard before. I mean, do they jot it down on paper so they can look it up later, or do they stop reading to look it up on the dictionary/google it or do they just continue reading and forget about the word?

Typically, I tend to use context clues and just guess the meaning (aka "just continue reading and forget about the word"). It usually works though I do tend to get strange ideas about the exact definition - I found that out in a strong way when I was studying vocabulary for the GRE exam. Then again, there are times when I will jot the word down and later look it up. That tends to be the choice when I am reading a more complex text and I am looking up several words at once.

What do you guys do?

1 comments:

Jennifer said...

I'm pretty much the same - just keep reading unless either a dictionary is within reach or the I need to understand the word to understand the book. Most of the time if I'm looking a word up it's for university reading when I really need to understand it!