{"id":387,"date":"2014-04-14T09:00:19","date_gmt":"2014-04-14T16:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/toefl\/?p=387"},"modified":"2020-12-10T13:47:13","modified_gmt":"2020-12-10T21:47:13","slug":"working-with-new-vocabulary-and-difficult-sentences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/toefl\/working-with-new-vocabulary-and-difficult-sentences\/","title":{"rendered":"Working with New Vocabulary and Difficult Sentences"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s stressful to encounter unknown material on a test, but it\u2019s pretty likely to happen. Fortunately, you can learn to work around the unknowns with these tactics, which can help you to simplify sentences and use context clues to reach the correct answer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Replace unknown words with likely synonyms<\/h2>\n

If you encounter an unknown word, you may be able to understand the sentence anyway by covering the word up, reading the surrounding sentences, and guessing what word would fit in the blank. With practice (don\u2019t forget to check yourself in a dictionary!), this can become one of the most valuable skills in your test-taking toolbox. In fact, on some vocabulary questions, ETS may not expect you to know the exact word they\u2019re asking about from memory. In those cases, they\u2019re testing your ability to use context to make an educated guess about the meaning of a word.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Study roots<\/h2>\n

I\u2019ve written before about studying etymology, or the origins and roots of words. I love learning and teaching roots not because of the roots themselves, but because learning to recognize and interpret them in context hones skills for general critical reading. Learning to think creatively and infer meanings and etymologies can help you with unfamiliar words, even if they don\u2019t contain any roots that you\u2019ve studied.<\/p>\n

A book such as Norman Lewis\u2019s Word Power Made Easy<\/i><\/a> <\/i>can help you learn the most common roots in English words as well as their histories and grammatical functions. This book is a must-have for all of my advanced English students, since it\u2019s the only one I\u2019ve found that lives up to its promise to make the material seem easy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What about crazy, complicated sentences?<\/h2>\n

We have a couple of tactics for dealing with unknown words, but let\u2019s face it\u2014covering up a whole sentence and guessing its meaning probably isn\u2019t the best idea. Instead, when you\u2019re grappling with a complicated sentence that doesn\u2019t seem to make any sense, try to reduce the sentence to its most essential elements. How do you do this? Start by marking out all modifying\u00a0phrases (don\u2019t worry\u2014we\u2019ll come back to them in a minute). Then see if there are any words or phrases that can be simplified.\u00a0 Then, if possible, break the remaining sentence into two or three simple sentences. You may have to remove some conjunctions in order to do this.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s try this out with an example from our GRE product, which has some extremely difficult sentences in the practice questions. I’ve changed the vocabulary a bit to be more TOEFL-friendly:<\/p>\n

Yet another creation in line with the tedious\u00a0melodramas that the director is so well known for, his\u00a0latest effort is likely to have a similar effect: a tiny subset of the population will praise\u00a0the deliberate pacing, while the majority will dismiss the film as boring nonsense.<\/em><\/p>\n

1. Removing modifiers:\u00a0\u00a0His\u00a0latest effort is likely to have a similar effect: a subset of the population will praise\u00a0the pacing, while the majority will dismiss the film.<\/em><\/p>\n

2. Simplifying words: The director’s new film\u00a0probably will\u00a0have a similar effect: some people\u00a0will enjoy\u00a0the pacing, but\u00a0most people will dislike\u00a0the film.<\/em><\/p>\n

3. Breaking the sentence up, looking at subjects and verbs:\u00a0The director’s new\u00a0film\u00a0probably will\u00a0have a similar effect. Some people\u00a0will\u00a0enjoy\u00a0the pacing of the movie. But\u00a0most people\u00a0will\u00a0dislike\u00a0the film.<\/em><\/p>\n

Now we can look back at our original sentence and consider the information we had removed:<\/p>\n

Yet another creation in line with the tedious\u00a0melodramas that the director is so well known for<\/strong>, his\u00a0latest effort is likely to have a similar effect: a tiny subset<\/strong> of the population will praise\u00a0the deliberate<\/strong> pacing, while the majority will dismiss the film as boring nonsense<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Is there anything there that gives us more information? Yes, there is: the first part tells us that the director usually<\/em> makes boring movies. Let’s put that back in our simplified sentence.<\/p>\n

4. Put back the extra information:\u00a0The director is well known for boring movies. Hi<\/em>s new\u00a0film\u00a0probably will\u00a0have a similar effect. Some people\u00a0will\u00a0enjoy\u00a0the pacing of the movie. But\u00a0most people\u00a0will\u00a0dislike\u00a0the film.<\/em><\/p>\n

You won’t always be able to make such a neat simplification, but following these basic steps can help to locate the main parts of a sentence.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For help learning TOEFL vocabulary, download and print our list of the top 200 TOEFL vocab words<\/a>, and study with Magoosh’s free TOEFL vocab flashcards<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s stressful to encounter unknown material on a test, but it\u2019s pretty likely to happen. Fortunately, you can learn to work around the unknowns with these tactics, which can help you to simplify sentences and use context clues to reach the correct answer.   Replace unknown words with likely synonyms If you encounter an unknown […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13604],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[13632],"class_list":["post-387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vocab"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWorking with New Vocabulary and Difficult Sentences - Magoosh Blog \u2013 TOEFL\u00ae\ufe0f Test<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It\u2019s stressful to encounter unknown material on a test, but it\u2019s pretty likely to happen. 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