Vocabulary in Context Inferencing

Students use contextual clues to infer the meaning of unknown words, then verify their guesses — building a transferable strategy rather than a list of definitions.

Procedure

1. Select a text at or slightly above students' level with 6–8 target words underlined — words students are unlikely to know but whose meaning is inferable from context.
2. Students read the full text once for gist, ignoring underlined words.
3. On a second read, students work in pairs to infer each target word: (a) identify its part of speech; (b) note the topic of the surrounding sentence; (c) look for clues (examples, contrasts, embedded definitions); (d) write a brief guess in their own words.
4. Pairs share guesses with another pair and resolve disagreements by pointing to specific textual evidence.
5. Confirm or correct guesses with a dictionary or teacher gloss. Discuss cases where the context was misleading.

Tips

• The clue-type taxonomy helps: teach students to name which type of clue they used (definition, example, contrast, general context). Naming the strategy is part of learning the strategy.
• Choose words that are genuinely inferable — avoid words whose meaning cannot be derived from the text alone. Unsuccessful guessing with no textual support is frustrating, not instructive.
• The step of pointing to evidence ("I think it means X because this sentence says...") is the core skill being practised, not the final answer.
• Research (Nation 2001) suggests learners need 10–15 exposures before word ownership; this activity accelerates retention when paired with deliberate recording in vocabulary notebooks.