Tài Liệu Ôn KSNL Tiếng Anh

STRATEGIES FOR READING COMPREHENSION
1.DEALING WITH UNFAMILIAR WORDS
Techniques for dealing with unknown vocabulary in reading texts:
- Ignore them
- Look for the meaning given somewhere in the sentence or in the previous and following sentences
- Guess their meaning from the context
Ignoring the unfamiliar words
For example, look at this exercise. Read the paragraph about obesity and answer the questions.
Obesity is a medical disorder that affects approximately 20-30% of the population of the United States of America. It is an excessive accumulation of body fat that results from the storage of excess food energy calories in the body’s fat cells.
Most American people suffer from obesity. True, False, or Not Given?
This paragraph presents…
some examples of obesity. C. a definition of obesity
the different types of obesity. D. the treatment of obesity.
When reading this passage, a student may find many unknown words and underline them. However, both questions can be answered without knowing the meaning of the italic words. It is even unnecessary to know the meaning of the word “obesity”!
Looking for the meaning of unfamiliar words given somewhere in the sentence
Sometimes a sentence gives a definition of a new vocabulary item or information about it. This information may be in parentheses ( ), after a dash (-), or after a comma (,).
Example: There were sixty-one identical cats in the classroom, each one exactly like the one on the board. (What does identical mean? It means exactly alike).
Sometimes the meaning or a clue to the meaning of a new vocabulary item is in another sentence or sentence part.
Example: A teacher from a Western country recently visited an elementary school in an Asian country. In one class, she watched sixty young children. (What is an elementary school? It’s a school for young children).
Guessing the meaning of unknown words from the context
If it seems necessary to understand the meaning of a particular unfamiliar word, you will have to guess. You cannot look up every word you don’t know in a dictionary since it is boring and time-consuming, especially when you read long passages and more importantly, it is forbidden when you take a test! Now, let’s focus on how to use context to guess the meaning of a word.
In ordinary reading, there are a number of clues that can help you to determine the meaning of an unknown word.
* Synonyms:
The first state to institute compulsory education was Massachusetts, which made it mandatory for students to attend school twelve weeks a year
The word mandatory is a synonym of the word compulsory
* Examples:
Many gardeners use some kind of mulch, such as chopped leaves, peat moss, grass clippings, pine needles, or wood chips, in order to stop the growth of weeds and hold in moisture.
From the examples given, it is clear that mulch is a plant matter.
* Contrast:
In the 1820s, the Southern states supported improvements in the national transportation system, but the Northern states balked.
Since the Southern states supported the improvements, and since a word signalling contrast (but) is used, it is clear that the Northern states disagreed with the idea, and that the word balked must mean objected or refused.
* General context:
In a desert, vegetation is so scanty as to be incapable of supporting any large human population.
As is generally known, deserts contain little vegetation, so clearly scanty must mean scare or barely sufficient.

2. SKIMMING THE PASSAGE

Read the title, subtitles and subheadings to find out what the text is about.
When you are skimming a passage for a general understanding, don’t try to understand every word. Jump from paragraph to paragraph, finding the main point in each paragraph before moving on to the next paragraph, like jumping across stepping-stones in a river. The main point of each paragraph is often, though certainly not always, the first sentence in each paragraph.
When you are looking at sentences to understand the main points, try to find the main words in the sentence, namely the subject, the verb and the object of the main clause. Try to ignore the other words, particularly the relative clauses and adverbial clauses.
Example
Tea plants are grown on tea plantations, called gardens or estates, in areas that have a great amount of rainfall and rich loamy oil.

It is enough to understand that tea plants are grown on/in somewhere/somehow. If you later find a question that relates to this sentence, you can come back and read it more intensively.

( When you have finished skimming the passage, skim the questions. You need to know how many questions there are and approximately what the questions are about. You can now practise skimming. To encourage you to skim as quickly as possible, there is a suggested time limit.

Exercise 1: Skim the passage quickly. Read only the title, the first paragraph,