ELT World Discussion

[David]

...is impossible. Do any of you still try to get your students to do this?
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[golightly]

disagree. It's possible, but it depends on factors such as how concrete or abtract it is if it's a noun, and relative similarity of the language to L1 - although that can also be a hindrance (false friends etc). I certainly learnt a lot of Turkish vocab by inference, following up what I'd learnt by checking in a dictionary later. What I didn't initially worry too much about was nuance of meaning - as long as I had the general understanding, that was enough to begin with. In fact, those words that I acquired in this way are the ones that are most memorable.
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[David]

[golightly]

Only at the very beginning, and only because I was straining too hard to be absolutely accurate. Good example: mishearing 'Inecek var' (there's someone to get off) on a Dolmus (shared taxi) and saying 'Inek var' (There's a cow) instead, having silently repeated the phrase to myself as I was waiting for my stop to go past.
Once I relaxed a bit and realised that for the most I didn't need to understand a lot of vocabulary absolutely 100%, then it became easier and in fact I became a lot more accurate.
Anyway, let's face it: what words are there in English that you don't know the meaning of 100%? And which ones can be misconstrued? 'presently' is a good one. In British English, it means 'in due course'; in American English it means 'immediately'.
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[Emma]

Will probably depend on age and general literacy ability of your learners. Hmm, that's mangled. What I mean is an 18 year old will have a much broader L1 vocabulary than an 8 year old and will be better placed to infer meaning from context.

I know when I was reading French Lit for A-level, we were encouraged to read in this way. Admittedly, I'm not sure English MFL teaching methods are to be recommended.

[dreadnought]

Disagree (though to be honest I think you may just be playing Devil's Advocate to get a thread going ). Perfectly valid reading strategy that we use all the time in our first language - or at least I do when I come across a word I don't know - and transferable to second language learning as well.

Impossible? Come now, in a sentence like 'I depooked him round the face for insulting my girlfriend', I think most people could make a reasonable guess as to the meaning of 'depooked'. Context doesn't always give clues, but often it does. Of course, the other option for teachers is to explain every word that the students ask you from a text. Which can be a bit tedious.

[Chimp Guevara]

If the learners can't guess from context, perhaps the vocabulary load is too high? I.e. there is too much unknown vocabulary and the learner is putting too many resources into struggling to make sense of the rest of the text to infer the meaning of the language identified as 'target'.

[denise]

I stress vocabulary guessing skills in my reading classes and spend chunks of class time practicing them (generally a few days devoted exclusively to learning strategies, and then refresher practice sessions thrown in as needed). No, the students don't often guess the full meaning, but as golightly mentioned, general comprehension can often be enough.

I think it is immensely valuable not only as a tool for learning vocabulary, but also for general thinking skills. I do whatever I can to get my students away from their tendency towards memorizing/expecting to be spoon-fed.

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[David]

[Guy Courchesne]

[Chimp Guevara]

[Henry_Cowell]