“Contextual� vocabulary acquisition is the active, deliberate acquisition of a meaning for a word in a text by reasoning from textual clues and prior knowledge, including language knowledge and hypotheses developed from prior encounters with the word, but without external sources of help such as dictionaries or people.
Usually, not even an average reader concentrates more on the words, hence, this test really goes deep down into the understanding and extracting the core meaning of a word.
Contextual can be both tricky and simple for a student. Just having the knowledge of words will be of no use if one doesn’t know how to use in what context. Hence they should follow certain rules to score points in Contextual Vocabulary.
Contextual Vocabulary is the most common method used for learning words. There are basically 4 rules for contextual vocabulary.
Latin Keywords methods is the easiest methods to memorize the words. Once, you guess the base meaning of a word, you can easily recognize the meaning of entire sentence.
For Example- Seismic
(a) Seismology is study of earthquake.
(b)Seismologists is the person who study Earthquake.
This method is very useful to memorize the synonyms and antonyms of words and use them in regular contexts.
For Example-
Take a word that you want to find more similar words for, maybe ‘Outdoor’. So make a point that whenever you come across any other word that relates to the meaning of ‘outdoor’, you parent word, note it down. This way you can get a book full words only with very little study.
Some common related words to outdoor- rustic, outside, garden, alfresco, woods etc.
In Associative method try to associate or relate the words with events, picture or image or with other different you.
For Example-
Look the word DEFILE. Let associate with POLLUTE
Now, we all know that POLLUTE meaning is contaminated or harmful substance.
Hence, the DEFILE meaning anything that is impure or spoil.
In Associative Method there is almost a deep connection with the words.
Many words in vocabulary doesn’t have keywords so its prefix can be used to know its close meaning. Prefix means the initial letters of a word that can be used to denote it in longer sentences.
For Example-
GEO is prefix of Geology.
So, Geologist are the scientist that study the earth and geography is the study of geology.
The children in the orphanage might have starved had it not been for the benevolence of the nuns, who sacrificed their own small salaries to provide food for the children. Benevolence means…
Options
(A) Favor
(B)Affection
(C) Charity
(D) Gifts
Correct Option (C)
Explanations – Benevolence means good nature or charity
One might think that the child would be afraid of such a large animal, but the intrepid young girl ran up to the beast and began scratching it behind the ears. Intrepid means
Options
(A) Thoughtless
(B) Adventurous
(C) Daring
(C) Exciting
Correct Option (C)
Explanation – Intrepid means daring or fearless.