GLOSSARY

Do you often read a text containing some or many unfamiliar words? what can you do if they are the key words without which it's impossible for you to understand the text thoroughly? One way to find the meaning of unfamiliar words is by looking them up in a dictionary. But sometimes there is no dictionary around you. Fortunately, contact always provides a special section in most of its articles to cover unfamiliar words, called a Glossary.

What is a Glossary?

A glossary is a list of key words taken from a text. These words often help you to understand the text better. Then, why would we want to do something else with a glossary? Well, because a glossary is an effective tool to further expand our vocabulary bank.

Be Creative

We can do several things in order to learn more from a glossary.
1. Find the other parts of speech of the key words in the glossary.
for example: from the root word develop (verb) we can have : development (noun), developing (adjective), developed (adjective), developer (noun), underdeveloped (adjective), undeveloped (adjective), overdeveloped (adjective).
The process of adding suffixes or prefixes to the root as in the above example is called derivation. Thus, instead of knowing only one word develop-you can enrich your vocabulary by looking at the other parts of speech of the word. You can also find the synonym and antonym of the new word.
2. Create Vocabulary Cards
A vocabulary card contains necessary information about a new word. You can include the meaning, the part of speech, the synonyms and the antonyms, common expressions using the new word, and of course, the sample sentences. Vocabulary cards are neat because you can carry them with you when you need to review the vocabulary. You can also bring a blank card so that you can write on it a new word that you hear or read at any time.