Activity 1 (#3c, page 58): I decided to come up with definitions for the words creech, messel, millicents, skorry, spatted, and zoobies from A Clockwork Orange. At first before reading the story I came up with the definitions by using words I knew the meanings of that sounded similar. Then I took this knowledge and tweaked it to being in a different situation. I then went to reading the first chapter of the book to try and come up with the definition. I used the context around the words and sentences to try and figure out what the meanings of the words were. I will be honest I still was completely lost because there were SO many words that I didn't know the meaning of that I wasn't able to figure out the definition. Finally, I zipped down to the Nadsat Dictionary to be given the definitions of the words. I don't think this is necessarily "cheating" because as a teacher I encourage my students to use a dictionary or glossary to help them with words that they don't know the meaning of. I can't even tell you how many times I've said the words "use your resources."
Activity 2 (7 on page 85):
1. Who tried to read the words letter-by-letter? I did not read the words letter by letter. I think the reason I didn't was because when I read normally I don't sound out my words letter-by-letter. I use my semantic and syntactic context to help me uncover words I may not be familiar with. In this case the words were written in a list so I used my knowledge of words familiar to these or have similar syllable combinations to read each word.
2. Who tried to read the words mostly by chunking them into syllables? I did this. I do this when I read anything. This is the way I work through words that I don't know.
3. Who tried to read the words sampling the letters more or less all at once? I did not do this. I worked more on sounding out each syllable.
4. What words do you know the meaning of, or think you know the meaning of? I have heard sarsaparilla before but the meaning is loosing me. I think I know the meaning of ingenue, but the rest of the words I haven't come across before.
5. Did pronouncing the words give you insights into their meanings? Like I did in activity 1 I found myself trying to make connections to words I was familiar with or sounded similar. Not only was I connecting them to similar sounding but I was causing myself to make their definition something similar to the familiar words as well.
6. How do you handle unknown words when you encounter them in normal reading? I use the context to help me determine the meaning of the unknown words I come across. I just hope that the majority of the words surrounding it and in surrounding sentences are not unfamiliar because it makes uncovering the meaning of the unknown word much simpler. I don't think I ever have the most "proper" definition of my unknown words but I get a general idea for what they mean using my clues from the surrounding text.
7. What do you think are the implications of this experiment and discussion for how we should help students deal with unfamiliar print words? I think this activity is to show you that words are their own aren't nearly as important as words in context. It also helped me understand that using context to uncover meaning is what we should be helping our students learn. We also shouldn't assign students a list of words to remember without giving them contextual evidence to help solidify the meanings to them. The key word here is CONTEXT!
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