A Guide to College Reading- Chap. 3

          Before reading this topic I didn't know much about the subject. Even though I knew that there were many types of context clues, I didn't know that there just so happened to be different types of context clues. I want to know more about how you can use your punctuation to separate the meaning clue from the rest of the sentence. I learned from reading this material that, there are five different types of context clues.

  1) Definition

  2) Synonym 

3) Example

4) Contrast

 5) Inference

 The synonym clue is when the writer provides a synonym which is a word or a brief phrase close to its meaning. The example clue is when the writer helps explain or clarify a word by providing examples. The contrast clue is when you have to deal with an antonym-- meaning the word you are looking for's opposite. However, there are limitations of context clues, such that: context clues seldom lead to a complete definition and sometimes a sentence does not contain clues to a words meaning. A few things that I also learned is that a writer provides synonyms in order to give out a hint to the reader, also, such punctuation: commas, parentheses, and dashes, separates the meaning clue from the rest of the sentence.