Interpret The Use Of Information From Text

In this Learning Unit, we will look examine various key concepts and ideas, and participate in a range of activities. The activities will help us to increase our understanding of the subject, as well as to put this into practice.

Unfamiliar Words

What do we do when we come across a word we do not understand? We are going to explore techniques you can use in order to understand the exact (literal) meaning of certain unfamiliar words in a piece of writing or part of a talk. If a word is unfamiliar to us there are certain strategies or techniques we can use to help us make an intelligent guess at what the meaning of the word is.

In order to do this, we need to know a little bit about how sentences are structured.

Syntax

The word syntax can be defined as the organisation of words in sentences the ordering of and relationship between the words and other structural elements in phrases and sentences.

Look at the difference between these two sentences:

Drinking water from the streams is very dangerous as the run-off from mines and commercial farms have poisoned a lot of rivers.

Commercial farms and mines run-off drinking water from very dangerous streams, which have poisoned a lot of rivers.

The orders in which we have placed the words, the syntax, have made all the difference in meaning between the two sentences.

Now look at this sentence: Themba was playing a pleasant tune on the mbiro when his mother called him.

We may not know what the word "mbiro” means but from where it is in the sentence we can guess that it is an object of some sort. It is a musical instrument that may be described as a ‘thumb piano’ and is of sub-Saharan origin. We can thus see how syntax gives us some clue as to the meaning of an unfamiliar word.

Word Attack

Another useful strategy for trying to understand what an unfamiliar word means is word-attack skills. Word-attack skills refer to looking at the unfamiliar word in its context and trying to see what you can work out from the context and the syntax and any other clues, such as capital letters, to help you understand the word.

An example could be the word ‘agri business’.

Imagine you’ve never heard the word before and hear the following sentence: "The statistics for the production of wheat was poor compared to last year in the agribusiness"

Now you could do a word attack on "agribusiness" by thinking of its parts. We are familiar with "agri" from terms like “agriculture” which we associate with farming. We also know the word "business" as referring to trade, industry or a company. So, we could guess that ‘agribusiness’ is something, which could be seen as a group of industries or trade dealing with farm produce and services.

Context

Context can be defined as the text surrounding a word or passage; the words, phrases, or passages that come before and after a particular word or passage in a speech or piece of writing. The context helps to explain the word’s full meaning.

When we looked at the word "agribusiness" the context in which it was used also helped us guess at its meaning. We picked up clues from the fact that it was connected to agriculture and farming and was concerned with trade.

Unfamiliar Words

Sometimes we borrow words from another language. Borrowed words are foreign words and we can usually only use the context and syntax in our word-attack to try and work out what they mean, as the parts of the word will not be familiar to us.

Look at the syntax, and context in which the word that is in bold is used. Use your word attack skills to try and work out what it means if you are unfamiliar with the word.

Escargot is my favourite dish" said Francois.  (We can see from the context and syntax that escargot refers to a food item. It is in fact French for snails.)

My hunger was satisfied with the ostrich biltong which was so lekker. (We can see from the context and syntax that biltong is a food. This is derived from Afrikaans and is dried raw meat. ‘Lekker’ is Afrikaans for delicious.)

I would rather watch flamenco than classical ballet. (We can see from the context and syntax that flamenco refers to a type of performance. It is a Spanish word describing a particular style of dancing.)

Will you be having the legumes and chips with your steak? (We can see from the context that legumes are a type of food to be eaten with steak. Legumes in French means vegetables.)

That gogo must be over 80 years old. (We can see from the context and syntax that gogo refers to an old person. It means granny in Zulu.)

These samoosas are delicious. (We can see that samoosas refer to a food item. It is an Urdu (Indian) word for a spicy delicacy that is triangular.)

We survived poverty through sharing and ubuntu. (We can see that poverty was alleviated through ubuntu. Ubuntu is a Xhosa word for family/friends helping each other in all circumstances.)

Complex Terms

A complex term is a word made up of more than one word in order to combine two ideas together. Complex is the opposite of simple; it means having many parts made up of many interrelated parts.

We all know what marine means and we know what biology means. Marine Biology is the specific complex term used to refer to the study of life forms that are related to the sea and coast.

Acronyms

An acronym can be defined as a word formed from initials; or parts of several words.

Example: ‘NATO’, from the initial letters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The context will usually help us understand what the acronym might be referring to, whether it is an organization or a group of people. Sometimes we use acronyms without knowing what the individual letters stand for.

For example:

We talk about SMS-ing somebody. Did you know that SMS stands for Short Message System?

Did you know that e-mail stands for electronic mail?

Do you know what AIDS stands for?

Neologism

A neologism can be defined as a new word or meaning, or a recently coined word or phrase.

An example is the word 'hoover'.

This was the name of a popular make of vacuum cleaner in the 1950's that then started to be used as a word in its own right, meaning 'to clean with a vacuum cleaner' as in "I will hoover the room with the Electrolux."

Click here to download and complete activity 1.

Colloquialisms and Slang

A colloquialism is an informal expression; an informal word or phrase that is more usual in conversation than in formal speech or writing.

e.g. "I am beat" meaning I am tired;

"I am now finished and klaar" also meaning "I am tired." or “I want to give up”.

Slang is also an informal manner of speech. Slang can be defined in two ways, firstly as very casual speech or writing when words, or expressions, are casual, or playful replacements for standard ones; slang words or phrases are often short-lived, and are usually considered unsuitable for formal contexts. Secondly, it can be defined as the language of an exclusive group; a form of language used by a particular group of people, often deliberately created and used to exclude people outside the group, e.g., "hang ten" is a phrase that comes from surfers’ slang.

We all use colloquialisms and slang in our ordinary day-to-day speech and also in emails or other forms of written communication to our friends and family. In the formal settings, however, we should guard against using them to our superiors and to our colleagues. In the professional world, it is more acceptable to use more formal standard ways of expressing ourselves, whether in writing or in oral communication. As always we need to be aware of our audience (listeners).

Click here to download and complete activity 2.

Jargon

Jargon can be defined as specialist language; it is the language that is used by a particular group, profession, or culture, especially when the words and phrases are not understood or used by other people, e.g., farmers’ jargon, or medical jargon.

Jargon is not a good way of communicating with the general public. Often the words used are so specialized that unless we are familiar with the field it is very difficult for a person off the street to work out what is meant by something. If we are with people who are in the same profession or a group of friends who share the same hobby, it is perfectly acceptable to use jargon.

Read this extract that is aimed at people in the computer field (the jargon is in bold) "Many people use MWEB as their ISP. When doing a search on the net you may just want to browse. If the page is written in Java or in HTML then you can scroll up and down. You can also download it on to a floppy or stiffy. A frustrating thing that happens is when the URL can't be located, even though you have done a good search with keywords, or the server is down".

How much did you understand? If you are very computer literate you may have understood quite a bit. If you know little about computers or the Internet this talk would not have meant very much to you. This is an example of jargon.

Can you think of ways that could help you understand this better? You could ask someone who is an expert, or you could find a good reference book to explain these terms.

Remember, do not get intimidated by jargon. If someone like a doctor or a salesperson uses jargon that you do not understand you should always ask for a clear explanation. Now think of a field in which you know quite a bit, such as plant growing techniques. Do you ever use jargon that would not be understood by people outside this field? How do you think it makes your listener (audience) feel?

Dialects

A dialect can be defined as a regional variety of language, with differences in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation e.g. In the United Kingdom there are many different dialects such as Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Cockney etc. South African English as used by native English speakers can be seen as a single dialect with the main difference being an accent.

South African English as used by native English speakers can be seen as a single dialect with the main differences being in accent. It is not very different from standard (British) English although a number of different dialects have been identified with non-native speakers, these include a number of varieties of 'township'

English and the Cape Flats dialect (although this is a mixture of English and Afrikaans).

It is not very different from standard (British) English although a number of different dialects have been identified with non-native speakers, these include a number of varieties of 'township' English and the Cape Flats dialect (although this is a mixture of English and Afrikaans).

Here is an example of Standard English "translated" into Scottish dialect.

"We are having a great time and are learning to communicate better in South African English."

"We ur havin' a braw time an' ur learnin' tae communicate better in sooth african sassenach".

Here is an example of Standard English "translated" into an Ali G dialect:

"Hallo everybody! What are you up to on this fine day ?"

"Alo everyone! wot iz yous up to on dis wicked day?"

Could you have used your word-attack skills to work out what "braw", "sassenach", and "wicked" mean in this context?

Ambiguous Words

Ambiguous words are words that have more than one meaning. A word, phrase, sentence, or other communication is called ambiguous if it can be reasonably interpreted in more than one way. The simplest case is a single word with more than one sense.

Let us look at the word "bank", for example, which can mean "financial institution" or the "edge of a river". Sometimes this is not a serious problem because a word that is ambiguous by itself is often clear in the particular context in which it is used. Someone who says "I deposited R100 in the bank" is unlikely to mean that she buried the money beside a river!

Look at these sentences. They will not make sense in terms of the word in bold (which has more than one meaning) unless we know the context.

Click here to download and complete activity 3.

Summarizing and Paraphrasing

Paraphrase is to rephrase and simplify; to restate something using other words, especially in order to make it simpler or shorter

Example: “he was suffering from an acute case of influenza and thus absented himself from his place of learning",

Could be much more simply put as: "he had bad flu and so didn't come to college".

Summarize is to make a summary; to make or give a shortened version of something that has been said or written, stating its main points.

Example: "The farm could have been over a million acres, it looked as if it could stretch to outer space".

Can be summarised as: “the farm was very big”

In order to paraphrase (and summarize) we need to be able to separate the main ideas from the supporting evidence used as examples or additional material.

Click here to download a handout that explains how to practice summary/paraphrasing.

Graphics and Visual aids

Graphic representations are a form of non-verbal communication.

Sometimes it might also be felt that a coloured picture is too distracting, so in certain textbooks or reference books, a simple drawing might be chosen. Next time you see a drawing ask yourself whether a more detailed coloured picture would improve the message or detract from the point of the illustration.

Click here to download a handout with different graphic tools applied to give context to text.

Click here to download and complete activity 5.