Using context to guess the meaning of an unknown word is not something new to us. We talked about this reading skill before. But from our reading experience we might also come across some words that are not new to us but their meanings are not clear. Very often we have to use the context to guess their meanings.
A context is a sentence, paragraph, or longer unit of writing that surrounds some words or phrases and determines their meanings. When we meet words or phrases with unclear meanings, we should look at their contexts, i.e. the sentences that come before and after. We should make full use of context clues, such as explanations or definitions, examples, restatements, synonyms or antonyms or even our common sense to extract the right meanings.
Example 1
The promise of the golden rule — that someone might do a good turn for you someday — merits only scorn in the cynical and fast-paced society of the 1990s. (Passage A, Unit 8)
The phrase “the golden rule” has no new words for us, but perhaps none of us knows for sure which rule it refers to, unless we read the restatement between the dashes “that someone might do a good turn for you someday”.
Example 2
Television makes history of events before any of us has even had a chance to absorb them in the first place. (Passage A, Unit 8)
There are no new words in “makes history of events” but the meaning is by no means clear to us. What does “makes history of events” mean here? Does it as a whole mean doing something important in history? Don't worry. Just go on:
An advertisement for major-league baseball attracts viewers with the assurance that “the memories are waiting” — an event that has yet to occur has already been packaged as the past. (Passage A, Unit 8)
This example illustrates the point that an event that has yet to occur has already been packaged as the past. Therefore, “makes history of events” means to turn events into history, or the latest happenings into past events. That is entirely different from “doing something important in history”.
Here “our internal control” refers to “the ethical boundaries”.
Now let's do some exercises to practice the techniques we've just learned.
