Which technique uses surrounding text to infer meaning?

Prepare for the Praxis Core Skills for Educators: Reading (5713) exam. Engage with flashcards and multiple-choice questions, each accompanied by hints and explanations. Boost your readiness for exam day!

Multiple Choice

Which technique uses surrounding text to infer meaning?

Context clues are signals in the words around an unfamiliar term that help you figure out what the word means. Readers use nearby definitions, restatements, examples, contrasts, or cause-and-effect relationships to infer meaning without looking it up. For instance, in a sentence like “The vase was fragile; it broke easily when bumped,” the second clause explains why fragile describes the vase, guiding you to the sense that fragile means easily broken. This approach focuses on decoding word meaning from the text itself, different from inferring a conclusion about the broader story, assessing the author’s attitude (tone), or thinking about how the text is organized (text structure).

Context clues are signals in the words around an unfamiliar term that help you figure out what the word means. Readers use nearby definitions, restatements, examples, contrasts, or cause-and-effect relationships to infer meaning without looking it up. For instance, in a sentence like “The vase was fragile; it broke easily when bumped,” the second clause explains why fragile describes the vase, guiding you to the sense that fragile means easily broken. This approach focuses on decoding word meaning from the text itself, different from inferring a conclusion about the broader story, assessing the author’s attitude (tone), or thinking about how the text is organized (text structure).

More practice questions