Taller de Comprensión de Textos I - Colegio de Bachilleres del ...

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Taller de Comprensión de Textos
3.1 THE DICTIONARY
To use the dictionary follow the steps:
1. Decide what word you wish to look up. Did you find something that you
read or hear it in a conversation?
2. Figure out what letter your target word starts with (i.e. PSYCHOTIC would start with a P; and GNOME
would start with a G; and words like KNOCK, KNICKERS and KNOB would naturally begin with a K). For
the purposes of this article, we will look up the word bias.
3. Open the dictionary so that it lies flat on the table before you. In the upper corners of the pages, notice the
GUIDE WORDS. Find the section dealing with words beginning with the letter of your target word. If you
see guide words beginning with the letter E, then move a few pages forward to the F section.
4. Consider the second letter of your target word, in this case, U. You must move along until you find guide
words beginning with FU. Perhaps you will see "furrow/futtock" in the upper left corner of the left page and
"futtock plate/gaberlunzie" in the upper right corner of the right page. Now you know that FUTILE is going
to be located on one of these two pages.
5. Scan down the list of entry words moving past FURRY and FUSE and FUSS. Since your word begins with
FUT, you must go past all the FUR and all the FUS words alphabetically until you reach the FUT area of
the page. In our example, you will need to move right down through FUT and FUTHARK and this is at last,
where you will find FUTILE.
6. Read the entry word and notice any near neighbors that might be related, such as FUTILITY.
7. Read the information given about this word. Depending on your dictionary, you might find many things.
o A definition of the word.
o One or more pronunciations. Look for a pronunciation key near the beginning of the dictionary to help
you interpret the written pronunciation.