Learning New Vocabulary

Working as an ESL (English as Second Language) tutor has been a huge challenge to me. Randomly I am assigned for various task, in an instance, to be a conversation tutor, idiom tutor or the most exciting the vocabulary tutor.

English as a subject and as a language is a very broad thing to discuss it is called a greatest thief according to an article I've read. How so? For a reason that English is not really english. It is a compilation of coined words from different languages.

What is the context?

The context is the part of a passage in which a particular word is used and which helps to explain that word. Suppose you were asked for the meaning of BEAR. Could you give a definite answer? Obviously not, for bear, as presented to you, has no context.

But if you were asked to define bear in the phrase "polar bear", you would immediately know it refers to animal. Or, if someone were to say, "Please stop whistling - I can't bear it," you would know that in this context bear means "endure" or "stand".

Why is the context important?

An important point for those of us who want to enlarge our vocabularies is this: the context can give us the meaning not only of familiar words like bear, but also of unfamiliar words.

Suppose, for example, you were asked for the meaning of VALIANT. You might not know it, unless, of course, you already have a fine vocabulary. But if you were to meet valiant in the following context, you would have a very good change of discovering its meaning: