Improving Your Vocabulary

Five Techniques for Acquiring Words

1.USE THE THREE-DOT METHOD

The three-dot method works like this: When you look up a word in the dictionary, make a small
dot in pencil next to the entry word. The second time you look it up, make another dot. The third
time you look it up, add a third dot, and this time, learn the word! Any word that crops up three
times within a short amount of time is obviously an important word that belongs in your
permanent and active reading vocabulary.
• • • eu • tha • na • sia (yoo-th e -na zh e , zhe- e ) n. The act or practice of ending the life of an
individual suffering from a terminal illness or an incurable condition. [Gk., a good death: eu-,
+thanatos, death]

2.USE VOCABULARY NOTE CARDS (OR KEEP A VOCABULARY NOTEBOOK)

First, write the word (underline it for emphasis), the context in which it occurred (meaning the
original sentence), and if you wish, the part of speech and pronunciation. On the other side, write
the definition and etymology. Study this example by Joe Abbott, “To Kill a Hawk”:
(Front side of card—word in original context, part of speech, and pronunciation):
. . . the epiphany was in part a result of something that happened the day before
noun i˘- pi˘f ’ e - ne

(Reverse side of card—major definitions and the etymology (language from which English word
is derived, and its meaning):
(1) a revelatory manifestation of a divine being
(2) perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization
from Greek—”to appear”
ESL students who are struggling to master the complexities of the English language might be
interested in learning variant word forms. For example, for ‘perceive’ – reverse side of the card -
variant forms: perception (noun); perceptive (adjective); perceptively (adverb)

An alternate method is to write new words in a vocabulary notebook, for example in an

inexpensive spiral notebook. Using the notebook means that you can record the words in the
order in which they appear, along with the page number where the word appeared in the
selection. When you reread the selection, you can easily locate the definitions to refresh your
memory in case you can’t remember a particular word.

3.BREAK NEW WORDS DOWN INTO THEIR COMPONENT PARTS

Even if you have never seen the word painstaking, you can perhaps determine the meaning by
separating the two parts of the word and then reversing them: pains taking becomes “taking
pains” or “taking great care”—in other words, analyzing the conversation in great detail.

Irrevocable (the accent is on the second syllable) can be broken down like this:
ir- (prefix, meaning “not”) +voc- (root, meaning “to call”) +-able (suffix, “able to”)
Put this all together, and you will get something like this:
a literal definition not able to be called
a better definition not able to be cancelled or withdrawn
It’s not a perfect definition, since irrevocable describes something that can’t be taken back, but
it’s good enough to give you the sense of what the writer means.

4. DEVELOP AN INTEREST IN ETYMOLOGY

Etymology refers to the study of word origins, and paying attention to them is not only
interesting for its own sake; in addition, word origins can be helpful for remembering the
meanings of new words. Something like 60 percent of English words come from Latin via
French, one of the several Romance languages derived from Latin; another 15 percent derive
from Greek, often through Latin, as well. Many words have unusual origins.
If 75 percent of the words in English are derived from Latin, French, and Greek, what of the
remaining 25 percent? Many, of course, derive from the original English language, known as
Anglo-Saxon. These tend to be the very basic buildingblock words of the language, words like
sun, moon, walk, boy, daughter, house, and so on. But many words come from more exotic and
unusual languages.
WORDS WITH UNUSUAL ETYMOLOGIES
Arabic algebra, tariff, alchemy, alkali, hejira
Native American languages canoe, hammock, succotash, moccasin, skunk, chile
Malay amok (an uncontrolled state)
Tamil pariah (an outcast)
Alaskan Russian parka
Hungarian coach (a type of carriage)
Old Norse sky, skirt

5. SUBSCRIBE TO A WORD-OF-THE-DAY WEBSITE

Dictionary.com Word of the Day www.dictionaryreference.com
Sample words: altruistic, churlish, glower, bonanza

Merriam-Webster Word of the Day

http://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day/
Sample words: diligent, genuflect, sustain, QWERTY

WordThink.com www.wordthink.com
Sample words: incongruous, assiduous, anecdotal, pragmatic

Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary (for ESL English-language learners)

www.learnersdictionary.com
Sample words: gamble, reserve, crucial, secure

Using Context Clues

Context clues free you from having to look up every unfamiliar word in the dictionary. It’s
tedious to have to look up so many words, and it detracts from the pleasure of reading.
Let’s see how context clues work with an example - Study this excerpt by poet and essayist
Leslie Marmon Silko, a Native American of the Laguna Pueblo:
As a person of mixed ancestry growing up in the United States in the late 1950s, I knew all of the
cruel epithets that might be hurled at others; the knowledge was a sort of solace that I was not
alone in my feelings of unease, of not quite belonging to the group that clearly mattered most in
the United States.
If the words epithets and solace are unfamiliar to you, see if you can determine their meaning
from the context: What would people hurl at others that are cruel? You might think of rocks, but
rocks aren’t cruel in and of themselves. More likely, epithets refer to abusive terms, often used
against people of another race or ethnicity. And solace is something that reduced her “feelings of
unease,” so that sounds as if she was comforted or consoled. Relying on context clues isn’t
foolproof, and even though using them requires some thought, they can help you expand your
knowledge of higher-level vocabulary.
Let’s look at some specific types of context clues so that you are familiar with how they work
before you begin the book. Each example is taken from some of the readings in the text. The
underlined part forms the context clue to the unfamiliar word printed in italics.

Synonyms
A synonym is a word that is close in meaning to the word in question. This is the easiest type of
context clue to recognize. For example, consider again this excerpt from Joe Abbott:
. . . even though the thing forgotten was the kind of experience, an epiphany, really, that marks a
person’s life, a moment which designates an irrevocable turning point.
Abbott’s definition is good enough to give you an understanding of the word.

Antonyms
An antonym is a word that means the opposite of the one you are unsure of. The antonym isn’t as
common as the other types of context clues, however, because writers have a tendency to use
synonyms as clues rather than antonyms. Here is one example from John Bussey, “Old Hat for
the New Normal,” in which he describes the new “buzz-phrase”—the “new normal”:
It springs from the discovery that—big surprise!—we’ve been living beyond our means. Three
years of economic crisis gave life to our new cliché, chastened as we are now to be more cost-
conscious, more prudent.
The phrase “living beyond our means” refers to spending too much money. The opposite of that
is being prudent—careful with our money, also suggested by the related phrase “cost-
conscious.”

Examples or Series of Details

An example—a particular instance of something more general—or a cluster of details in a
sentence may reveal the meaning of an unfamiliar word. In “How Facebook Ruins Friendships”,
Elizabeth Bernstein writes this:
Typing still leaves something to be desired as a communication tool; it lacks the nuances that
can be expressed by body language and voice inflection.
“Online, people can’t see the yawn,” says Patricia Wallace, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins
University. . . Meaning “shades of meaning” or “subtle degrees of difference,” the examples of
body language and voice inflection suggest a sufficiently accurate definition.

Situation
The situation or circumstance in which the word is used may give you a hint as to its meaning.
Mark Ian Barasch describes his experience living on the streets of Denver for a week as a
homeless person as an exercise in developing compassion. Consider this excerpt:
It’s a different map of the world. Which Starbucks has a security guard who’ll let you use the
bathroom? How long can you linger in this place or that before you’re rousted?
Even if you have never seen the word rousted before, the situation Barasch describes indicates
that it means to be forced out of a place, asked to leave.

Emotion
The emotional attitude evident in a passage—its mood or atmosphere— may provide a good
enough clue to save you from turning to the dictionary. In “The Seat Not Taken,” the African-
American writer and professor John Edgar Wideman writes about the odd experience of other
passengers never sitting next to him in the Amtrak train he rides between New York and
Providence, Rhode Island, where he teaches:
Of course, I’m not registering a complaint about the privilege, conferred upon me by color, to
enjoy the luxury of an extra seat to myself. I relish the opportunity to spread out, savor the
privacy and quiet and work or gaze at the scenic New England woods and coast.
Relish and savor mean nearly the same thing—a positive emotional enjoyment of something
pleasurable. Both the emotion and the situation suggest the meaning of both words, and of
course, if you know one, you can easily figure out the other.

EXERCISE 1—USING CONTEXT CLUES

Try your hand at these passages that contain some words that might be unfamiliar to you. Study
the passage carefully, paying attention to the context surrounding the italicized word. Then write
your best estimation of the word’s meaning in the first space. Finally, look the word up in the
dictionary and write the definition in the second space. See how close your definition is to the
dictionary’s.

1. Never let up, women. Pound away relentlessly at this concept, and eventually it will start to
penetrate the guy’s brain. (Dave Barry, “Tips for Women: How to Have a Relationship with a
Guy”)
Your definition ______________________________________________________
Dictionary definition _________________________________________________
2. If any aspect of the economic squeeze is hitting American workers across the board—white
collar and blue-collar, high-income and low-income, chief executives and janitors—it is the
phenomenon of increased stress on the job, a combination of longer workweeks and having to
toil harder and faster during one’s hours at work. (Steven Greenhouse, The Big Squeeze: Tough
Times for the American Worker)
Your definition ______________________________________________________
Dictionary definition _________________________________________________
3. At home all I had was an ancient English/Spanish dictionary my father had used to teach
himself English, but its tiny print and archaic language did more to obscure meaning than to
shed light on it. (Rose Guilbault, “School Days”)
Your definition ______________________________________________________
Dictionary definition _________________________________________________
4. The writer is describing a fellow student, a Navy veteran, who had been stationed in the
Middle East during the Iraq war: “He tells me that he was in the Middle East early on in the war
around the same time I was. A job brought him up to the Bay Area and when he saw how much
money he could receive by going back to school, he jumped on it. I asked him if he misses the
military, and with a slight hint of regret he reminisces: ‘Oh yea, I thought it was going to be a
career but . . .’” (Colby Buzzell, “Johnny Get Your Textbook”)
Your definition ______________________________________________________
Dictionary definition _________________________________________________
5. Of the few hues that can be perceived as both light and dark, blue defines our many moods.
(James Sullivan, Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon)
Your definition ______________________________________________________
Dictionary definition _________________________________________________
6. I stopped talking to Kelly, my wife. She loathed me, my silences, my distance, my inertia. I
stopped walking my dog, so she hated me, too. (Chris Rose, “Hell and Back”)
Your definition ______________________________________________________
Dictionary definition _________________________________________________
7. Yolanda Leif graphically describes the trials of a waitress in a quality restaurant. They are
compounded by her refusal to be demeaned. Yet pride in her skills helps her through the night.
“When I put the plate down, you don’t hear a sound. When I pick up a glass, I want it to be just
right. When someone says, ‘How come you’re just a waitress?’ I say, ‘Don’t you think you
deserve being served by me?’” (Studs Terkel, “Somebody Built the Pyramids”)
Your definition ______________________________________________________
Dictionary definition _________________________________________________
8. The speculators, next, would hire people to pass out handbills in the Eastern and Midwestern
cities, tracts limning the advantages of relocation to “the Athens of the South” or “the new plains
Jerusalem.” When persuasion failed, the builders might resort to bribery, paying people’s
moving costs and giving them houses, in exchange for nothing but a pledge to stay until a certain
census was taken or a certain inspection made . . . The speculators’ idea, of course, was to lure
the railroad. (Laurence Shames, “The Hunger for More”)
tracts Your definition _______________________________________________
Dictionary definition _________________________________________________
lure Your definition _________________________________________________
Dictionary definition _________________________________________________

IDENTIFYING THE WRITER’S PURPOSE

Although he or she may not be aware of it when opening a new document on the computer
screen, every writer has in mind some purpose, the intention or the reason he or she is going to
the trouble of writing. The ancient Greeks taught that literature had three aims: to please, to
instruct, and to persuade. What exactly did they mean?
THE WRITER’S PURPOSE IN CLASSICAL TERMS

• To please: to delight, entertain, amuse, give pleasure to, describe, paint a picture in words
• To instruct: to teach, show, inform, examine, expose, analyze, criticize
• To persuade: to convince, change one’s mind, influence, argue, recommend, give advice to

Sometimes it is hard to see an exact distinction between “instructing” and “persuading” since the
very act of “instructing” us about something that needs to be changed might also “convince” us
of the need for that change. For example, in the passage about the mental abilities of various
species of animals, the writer is clearly informing us (instructing), but there is also an implied or
secondary purpose—to persuade us not only that these abilities exist but that they are marvelous
in their own right. Maybe we humans aren’t as distinctive as we think we are. Another example
of how a writer may have overlapping purposes can be seen in extract by Dave Barry, “Tips for
Women: How to Have a Relationship with a Guy.” Barry humorously explores the difficulties
men and women have talking to each other. Obviously, his purpose is, at least in part, to
entertain. But what other purpose might he have? Because Barry pokes fun at men for their
inability to commit to a relationship and at women for exhaustingly analyzing every little thing
that happens between a man and a woman, his purpose seems more to instruct than to persuade.
He is pointing out our differences, not trying to reform us or make us change our ways. Besides,
what writer, discussing the age-old battle of the sexes, could ever accomplish that!

Annotating, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing

The three skills you will learn here—annotating, paraphrasing, and summarizing—are
extraordinarily useful not only for college students, but also for anyone who must understand,
absorb, remember, and condense information from the printed page. The following diagram
summarizes and defines them:
Annotating A study and comprehension skill, which includes:
Writing notes in the margin of a text, circling words you don’t know, noting questions to ask,
and otherwise interacting with the text
Paraphrasing A comprehension and writing skill, which includes:
Putting a writer’s words into your own words without leaving anything important out, similar to
translating
Summarizing A comprehension and writing skill, which includes:
Writing a passage that condenses a writer’s ideas by identifying only the main points and
omitting unimportant supporting details
What is the relationship among these three skills? Annotating is the first step both to good
comprehension and to writing a successful summary; paraphrasing is a preliminary step
necessary to produce a good summary. Finally, both paraphrasing and summarizing show you
how well you have understood what you read and how accurately you can convey the ideas in
your own words.

ANNOTATING
Annotating is sometimes called reading with a pencil in your hand. (And using a pencil is a good
idea, so that you can erase your notes later, if you want to.) If you can’t bear to mark up your text
because you want to sell the book back after the course ends, then make a photocopy of the
assignment. This will allow you to mark it up as much as you want. Note, too, that annotating is
not the same as marking the words with a yellow or pink highlighter. Many students rely on
these markers as a study aid while they read their textbook assignments; reading instructors,
however, generally discourage this practice. Such marks only tell you that the material will be
important to learn—some day! As such, highlighting is a passive activity. Over-highlighting
makes the pages look colorful to be sure, but it is not an efficient way to get and to retain the
main points. Careful annotating, in contrast, allows you both to read actively and to pull out
the essential ideas at the same time. Here are some suggestions for good annotations.
Study them before you continue on to study the models that follow.

Techniques for annotating

Main ideas: Jot down little phrases in your own words, restating the main ideas.
Phrases or sentences that you don’t understand: Put a question mark in the margin.
Vocabulary words that are unfamiliar to you: Circle them in the text.
Questions to ask in class: Write in the margin and mark with a clear symbol of your own
devising.
Ideas that you disagree with: Write a star or some other symbol in the margin.

To illustrate this process, consider a brief excerpt of the text, Virginia Morell’s “Minds of Their
Own,” which discusses animal intelligence, cognition, and use of language. Read the passage
first; then, study the annotations.
In the late 1960s a cognitive psychologist named Louis Herman began investigating the
cognitive abilities of bottlenose dolphins. Like humans, dolphins are highly social and
cosmopolitan, living in subpolar to tropical environments worldwide; they’re highly vocal; and
they have special sensory skills, such as echolocation. By the 1980s Herman’s cognitive studies
were focused on a group of four young dolphins—Akeakamai, Phoenix, Elele, and Hiapo—at
the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory in Hawaii. The dolphins were curious and
playful, and they transferred their sociability to Herman and his students.
“In our work with the dolphins, we had a guiding philosophy,” Herman says, “that we could
bring out the full flower of their intellect, just as educators try to bring out the full potential of a
human child. Dolphins have these big, highly complex brains. My thought was, ‘OK, so you
have this pretty brain. Let’s see what you can do with it.’”
To communicate with the dolphins, Herman and his team invented a hand-and-arm signal
language, complete with a simple grammar. For instance, a pumping motion of the closed fists
meant “hoop,” and both arms extended overhead (as in jumping jacks) meant “ball.” A “come
here” gesture with a single arm told them to “fetch.” Responding to the request “hoop, ball,
fetch,” Akeakamai would push the ball to the hoop. But if the word order was changed to “ball,
hoop, fetch,” she would carry the hoop to the ball. Over time she could interpret more
grammatically complex requests, such as ‘’right, basket, left, Frisbee, in,” asking that she put the
Frisbee on her left in the basket on her right. Reversing “left” and “right” in the instruction
would reverse Akeakamai’s actions. Akeakamai could complete such requests the first time they
were made, showing a deep understanding of the grammar of the language.
PARAPHRASING
Next we turn to paraphrasing, a skill that helps you to focus and to read accurately. As you will
recall from the introduction to this section, paraphrasing means restating the writer’s words in
your own words. It is useful both to test comprehension and to clarify meaning. When you
paraphrase, you need to go through the passage one sentence at a time, rewriting and changing
the words into your own words as much as possible, without changing the meaning of the
original. That’s the hard part. Also, it is perfectly all right if your paraphrase turns out to be
longer than the original. To write a successful paraphrase, consider the following suggestions:

Techniques for paraphrasing

• Substitute a synonym (a word that means the same) for a key word in the original.
• An exception to the above: Don’t strain to find a synonym for major words. Call a dolphin a
dolphin, not a marine cetacean mammal.
• Omit very unimportant ideas if your instructor allows this.
• Combine ideas when possible.
• Maintain the flavor and level of formality of the original passage.
• Do not inject your own ideas or opinions.

Study these samples of paraphrases of short excerpts.

We were Indian children who were expected to be stupid. Most lived up to those expectations
inside the classroom but subverted them on the outside.
(Sherman Alexie, “Superman and Me”)
Paraphrase: Inside our classrooms, we Indian children acted as stupid as our teachers expected
us to be, but outside the classroom we challenged this conception.

Here is a slightly more difficult example:

“It is curious that in English the word blue should represent depressing as well as transcendent
things; that it should be the most holy hue and the color of pornography,” wrote Victoria Finley
in Color: A Natural History of the Palette. (James Sullivan)
Paraphrase: According to Victoria Finley in her book, Color: A Natural History of the Palette,
it is strange that in English the word blue represents opposites—depression as well as things that
transcend, holiness as well as pornography.

SUMMARIZING
Summarizing—the last skill—is the culmination of the other two skills: Before you can write a
summary, you must first annotate the text; the summary-writing process requires you to
paraphrase important points but also to eliminate minor supporting details. The point of writing a
summary is to convey only the most important information, so you have to develop a feel for
what to save and what to drop. This process sounds harder than it really is. When one paints a
room, he or she has to spend more time preparing the surface than actually painting it. Writing a
summary is the same. It just takes good preparation and practice.
First, study the following chart, which lists the techniques for summarizing.
You may use them all, or you may decide that some work better than others.

Techniques for summarizing

• Read the selection and circle unfamiliar words.
• Read the selection again, annotate it, and look up circled words.
• Underline important phrases and sentences and cross out unimportant material.
• Copy the notes from your margins onto a piece of paper or type them into a computer. Leave
plenty of space between your notes from each paragraph.
• Review your notes. Add or delete information as needed.
• Rewrite the selection, condensing where you can. Substitute your own words for the writer’s,
where possible, and add transitions to show the relationship between ideas.
• Read through your summary and check for accuracy. Be sure you don’t introduce your own
ideas or opinions. Some students find it helpful to cross out the relatively unimportant words and
phrases in the original before they write a summary.

Example
Original Passage
What’s a food-loving entrepreneur to do? The recession has turned eating at home into a
necessity. And opening a new restaurant, bakery, or pub requires a chunk of increasingly-hard-to
come-by capital. Enter the deliciously nimble food cart. In the past few years, more than 450 of
these hyper-local, highly affordable eateries have sprung up in Portland, Oregon, bringing the
sweet smell of commerce back to the streets.
Carts make it possible for people of modest means to eat out—usually more healthfully than at
fast-food chain restaurants,” reports New Urban News (Jan.-Feb. 2010). The carts are also easy
on proprietors: Licenses cost $315, monthly rent averages $500, and they can be outfitted for as
little as a few thousand dollars. Portland’s carts are run by a mix of immigrants and culinary
school graduates, and have fewer major health code violations than the area’s restaurants do.
The rapid proliferation also might finally settle the carts-versus-restaurants debate that keeps
many cities from enacting vendor-friendly policies. “The commonly heard complaint is that . . .
carts unfairly compete with brick-and-mortar restaurants,” one Portlander told New Urban News.
“If anything, the food carts seem to feed the Portland food buzz and create more consumer
demand.” (Length: 201 words)

A good rule of thumb is that a summary should be about 25 percent of the original length. A
summary assignment means that you have to let go of a lot of information in the original.
Keep in mind that you are summarizing, not paraphrasing. You have to decide what to save and
what to omit. This requires you to see the difference between main ideas and supporting details.
Keep only what is absolutely essential to preserve the meaning and the flavor of the original.

Summary
Portland, Oregon’s food carts have had several advantages. People of modest means can eat out
healthfully, and for the entrepreneurs, operating a food cart is a lot cheaper than opening a
restaurant or bakery. Portland’s 450 food carts are creating more consumer demand for healthy
and affordable food. (Length: 47 words)