Glossary · Comprehension and language
What are context clues?
Definition
Context clues are hints in the surrounding text, such as a definition, an example, a synonym or a contrast, that help a reader work out what an unfamiliar word means.
Authors often help without meaning to. “The canine, a large brown dog, slept by the door” defines the word right there. “Unlike his gregarious sister, Leo was shy” gives a contrast. Students can learn to look for these.
Context clues are for meaning, not for reading the word. A student should decode the word first, then use context to work out what it means. Using context to guess what the word says is a different habit, and an unreliable one for beginning readers.
Context works best in rich texts and with a student who already knows a lot of words. In many sentences the clues are weak or missing, so students also need morphology and a dictionary.
In a lesson
Read: “The trail was so steep and arduous that we stopped to rest every few minutes.” Ask what arduous might mean. The student uses steep and stopped to rest to guess hard and tiring.
Why does this matter for the record?
Note whether a student decodes the word before using context. That order is the habit to look for.
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