Hints for Reading PracticeDictionaries slow you down!If you have chosen the right, fairly easy, sort of book for your general reading practice, you will not need to use a dictionary for such an exercise. If you really must know the dictionary meaning of all the words you meet (a doubtful necessity) jot them down on a piece of paper to look up later. Actually, the meanings of many words will be clear from the sentences around them - what we call the ‘context’. Here is an example. Do you know the word ‘sou’wester’? It has two meanings in English as the following sentences indicate:a) In spite of the fact that the fishermen were wearing sou’westers, the storm was so heavy they were wet through.b) An east or north-east wind brings cold, dry weather to England, but a sou’wester usually brings rain.You should have guessed very easily that in sentence a) the word sou’wester refers to some kind of waterproof clothing, presumably quite thick and heavy since it is worn by fishermen in storms. In sentence b) it is clearly a kind of wind, coming from a south-westerly direction. Incidentally, you would have had the greatest difficulty in finding this word in most dictionaries since it often appears a long way down among the secondary meanings of south. If you did not know that sou’ meant ‘south’ in the first place you could only have found the word by the merest chance.Pay attention to paragraph structureMost paragraphs have a ‘topic sentence’ which expresses the idea. The remaining sentences expand or support that idea. It has been estimated that between 60 and 90% of all expository paragraphs in English have the topic sentence first. Always pay special attention to the first of a paragraph; it is most likely to give you the main idea.Some-times, though, the first sentence in the paragraph does not have the feel of a 'main idea’ sentence. It does not seem to give us enough new information to justify a paragraph. The next most likely place to look tor the topic sentence is the last sentence of the paragraph.Take this paragraph for example:Some students prefer a strict teacher who tells them exactly what to do. Others prefer to be left to work on their own. Still others like a democratic discussion type of class. No one teaching method can be devised to satisfy all students at the same time.’Remember that the opening and closing paragraphs of a passage or chapter are particularly important. The opening paragraph suggests the general direction and content of the piece, while the closing paragraph often summarizes the very essence of what has been said.
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