8 Strategies to Effective Word Identification

Unless you're a word wizard there will be times in your life when you'll come across a word that you can't identify. It may be one you've never seen before, or one that looks vaguely familiar but you can't place it. When this occurs there are several strategies you can use to try and identify the word.
1. Read the word again. Say it aloud enunciating every letter. Sometimes this simple tactic can make the word reveal itself to you, especially if it is one that you are familiar with.
2. Read the sentence again. See if you can ascertain the meaning from the context of the word within the sentence. Again, this is an especially effective strategy is the word is one you've forgotten but have understood in the past.
3. Is there a prefix on the word? Sometimes a word looks strange and unfamiliar if something has been tagged onto the front of it. The additional letters can fool the brain into thinking it's a new word when really it isn't --prefixes include pre- (as in prepaid), un- (as in undisputed) and re- (as in rerun).
4. An alternative to strategy 3 is to identify if there's a suffix at the end of the word. Again, the additional letters can create an illusion of a new word rather than one that has been slightly modified. Suffixes include -ness (as in kindness), and --ing (as in helping).
5. Identify the stem of the word -- the main part of the word that has the suffix, prefix, or even plural additions removed. Stems are words such as love (from lovely), real (from really), peace (from peacefully) and blind (from blindness).
6. Separate and then blend the syllables of the word -- say each part of the word aloud independently, and then run them together, for example un-fair-ly -- unfairly, or un-usual-ly -- unusually.
7. The reader (and writer's) best friend -- use a dictionary to help you identify the unknown word, and what it means, will allow you to identify the word the next time you see it.
8. If you don't have a dictionary available, ask someone else if they know. If non of the other strategies work, then this is where you'll need to find someone such as a parent, your teacher, or a librarian to identify the word for you. Once you find out what the word is, make sure that you commit it to memory so that you've productively spent the time it took to identify as you've expanded your vocabulary.
 posted by Jane