Dealing with difficult words and sentences.

Academic texts are often difficult: they have difficult ideas expressed in difficult language. From a language point of view, there are several features that make the text difficult. They include difficult words, difficult combinations of nouns and difficult sentences.

Difficult words.

It is unlikely that you will know every word in a text and even if you think you have seen every word before, it is unlikely that you will have seen a particular word in its present context. It is therefore necessary to work out the meaning of unfamiliar words in context and, perhaps, familiar words in new contexts. This is necessary even if you have a dictionary as your dictionary does not know the exact context in which the word is being used.

If you think your vocabulary level is too low for academic work there are three solutions: read, read and read.

A. Is it necessary to know the exact meaning of a particular word? Often a rough meaning is enough (does the word have a positive or negative meaning?). Remember that the purpose of reading an academic text is to get information and it is possible to understand the text without knowing the meaning of every word. It is not necessary to be able to explain, or translate, the meaning of a word.

B. Look for definitions. The author may know a particular word may be new so explains. The author may also be using the word in a new, or unusual way so will need to explain how it is being used. This will be done by using a definition, an explanation, an example or by using a synonym (a word with the same meaning). The phrases "called", "known as", "is the name applied to", "in other words", "that is", "is said to be" are often used.

C. Work out the meaning of the word or phrase.

There are two main approaches to doing this. It may not tell you the exact meaning of the word, but it may help you to narrow down the possibilities so the text makes sense:

1. You can analyse the word itself. You can look inside the word. You can use your knowledge of similar words and look at how the word is constructed. Using this information you can find information about (a) the meaning of the word as well as (b) grammatical information.

a. Affixes can help you work out the meaning of an unfamiliar word. For example, if you do not know the meaning of the word "incomprehensible", you can work it out if you are familiar with "comprehend" meaning understand, "in" meaning not, and "ible" meaning can. Therefore "an incomprehensible sentence" refers to a sentence that you cannot understand.

In the Jabberwocky text above, we know "outgrabe" is a verb because "out-" is a common verb prefix ("outwit", "outdo")

See Vocabulary building: Affixes and roots for more examples

b. It is not usually difficult to work out the grammatical category: noun, verb, adjective, adverb etc. If the word ends in "-ing" or "-ed" it could be a verb; if the word ends in "-ly", it may be an adverb; if the word ends in "-tion", it is possibly a noun. If the word ends in "-ise", it is probably a verb. If you see a sentence like "The spid claned lanly", you can work out that "claned" is the past tense of the verb "clane", and "lanly" is an adverb.

2. You can use the context. You can make use of the other words, phrases, sentences and information around the problematic word. Using this information you can find information about the meaning of the word as well as grammatical information. (a) Grammatical information can be obtained from the place of the word in the sentence. (b) Information about the meaning of the word can come from the meanings of the other words in the context.

a. By using your knowledge of typical English clause and phrase structure, you can often work out the grammatical function of a particular word. Typical clause structures are SPO, SPA, SPOC.

b. Information about the meaning of the word can come from the meanings of the other words in the context. Using your knowledge of the world and your subject can help. You can, for example, make use of your knowledge of the relationship between object and purpose, "He took the ... and drank", "She sat on the ..." or cause and effect, "The heavy ... caused the river to rise". Words and phrases connected with "and", "moreover" or "in addition" will have related meanings and clauses connected with "while" or "although" will have opposite meanings.

You will need to use context even with simple words like "like", "too", "light", " fly", as they have different meanings and grammatical forms. You will need to use the context to determine which is being used in a particular situation.