Skip it or guess it?
Hamza Ahmed, Pakistan
Knowing the unknown is an intrinsic human trait. Our thirst for making sense of difficult concepts and other things is what increases our knowledge and paves the way for innovation. Similarly, when we read and encounter some unfamiliar words, we try to search for their meaning in a dictionary, so we can make sense of the sentence and acquire difficult concepts.
However, considering the amount of reading a student or a professional must do, using a dictionary (every time you come across a difficult word) is not an efficient method, as it breaks the rhythm and readers lose their interest in reading. Also, skipping that word is not an option either, as it would result in getting the wrong understanding of the text.
For second language English readers, it is not possible to understand every single word written in the given piece of text. Therefore, they need some strategies that can help them to understand the meaning of words without relying on the dictionary. In this article we will discuss some methods which we can use to find the meanings of unknown words without using a dictionary.
Reading strategies for unknown words
Below are some of the ways that can help a reader to stop being dependent on a dictionary to find meanings of tricky words.
Using context clues
The context of a sentence can help a reader to comprehend a word that they find difficult to understand. Take this sentence for example:
He faced a predicament while riding a bike on mountainous terrain, so he could not win the race.
The word ‘predicament’ could be unknown to many. However, if we try to understand the context of the whole sentence, which is basically ‘the person faced a kind of situation that led to failure’, now the student might ask himself a question: ‘why do we fail in something?’ The answer from his personal experience would be: We fail in something when the task was very difficult or we were unprepared.
Therefore, an educated guess about meaning of the word ‘predicament’ could be ‘a difficult or tough situation’.
Using your own knowledge
A basic general knowledge or our previous knowledge about the subject matter can also aid us to understand tricky words, for example, when the sentence reads: The librarian said, ‘Please return all the borrowed books by Friday’.
Here the word ‘borrow’ could be tricky one to understand. But if we know the purpose of the library, which is to give books on rent for a period of time. We can easily guess that the word’s meaning is related to ‘renting’.
Identify the word’s function
Parts of speech tell us the grammatical role a sentence plays in a sentence. Each verb, adverb, adjective and noun serve a specific purpose in a sentence. Take the example of this paragraph taken from Cambridge IELTS Book 15 Reading Test 1 (2026).
People were selling nutmeg at expensive prices to Venetian merchants while keeping secret where it came from. The Arab-Venetian dominance of the trade finally ended in 1512, when the Portuguese reached the Banda Islands and began exploiting its precious resources.
Here the word ‘precious’ could be difficult for a reader to understand. If we look at the sentence structure, we can understand that the word ‘precious’ is used before the noun ‘resources’, thus it is an adjective, basically telling us about the characteristic of the resource. So, what could be a characteristic of the resource, either it would be valuable or worthless. If we look further back at the start of the paragraph, they have mentioned that the nutmeg (resource) was sold at an expensive price; therefore, we can confidently say that the word ‘precious’ is somewhat similar to ‘expensive’ or ‘valuable’.
Look for comparisons or similarities
Linking words and conjunctions are used to draw similarities and comparisons between different ideas and words. These words can help the readers to find the meanings of tough vocabulary. For example, the sentence is: ‘This allowed locals to avoid the presence of Portuguese or Spanish troops on their soil, but it also left them unprotected from other invaders.’
The sentence has used ‘but’ which is used to contrast two ideas. The sentence before the conjunction ‘but’ is basically telling us that the locals saved themselves from Portuguese or Spanish troops. Therefore, the sentence after ‘but’ would be opposite in meaning, so even if we do not know the meaning of the word ‘unprotected’ or ‘invaders’, the students can assume that the locals were not saved (unprotected) from someone (invaders) else.
Use affixes
This is basically morphological analysis also used in natural language processing models to break down the words into their smallest units (prefixes and suffixes). The same approach can be applied by a reader to learn complex words. We can take the example of the same paragraph in the above section. The word ‘unprotected’ has three parts: un (prefix) + protect (root) + -ed (suffix). If the student knows the meaning of ‘protect’, they can guess that ‘unprotected’ would have the opposite meaning.
Conclusion
Reading is tough, and it becomes more difficult if we have a poor vocabulary. Using the dictionary is not practical in every scenario, especially if someone is taking an English proficiency test such IELTS, TOEFL and PTE. During these tests, it is also not possible to use a dictionary. That is why, by using the above discussed strategies, we can make an educated guess about the meaning of the words rather than totally skipping them, which would obviously lead to misunderstandings and create several problems in our social life and workplace, as well as result in poor performance in a proficiency test.
Useful resources
‘Cambridge IELTS Book 15 Reading Test 1’. Engnovate. Available from https://engnovate.com/ielts-reading-tests/cambridge-ielts-15-academic-reading-test-1/ (Last accessed 4 July 2026).
‘Five ways to work out the meaning of new words’. (2026). British Council. Available from https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/english-levels/improve-your-english-level/five-ways-work-out-meaning-new-words (Last accessed 11 June 2026).
‘Dealing with unfamiliar words’. (2026). BBC Bitesize. BBC. Available from https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z4ms6g8#zd78mbk (Last accessed 11 June 2026).
‘Building vocabulary for reading and speaking: predicting the meaning of unknown words’. (2026). University of Guelf. Available from https://guides.lib.uoguelph.ca/c.php?g=739293&p=5331717 (Last accessed 11 June 2026).
‘Using English for academic purposes: vocabulary’. (2026). UAfAP. Available from https://www.uefap.org/vocabulary-learning-unknown/ (Last accessed 11 June 2026).
