Secion 1

The dictionary

Summary: What is the dictionary? . Is a collection of words in one or more specific languages,
often arranged alphabetically, and we can break it down into the following parts:

 Guide words: a page header (or simply header) or text that is separated from
the body text and appears at the top of a printed page
 Syllables: is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds
 Respelling: is a regular phonetic respelling of a word that has a standard spelling but
whose pronunciation according to that spelling may be ambiguous, which is used to
indicate the pronunciation of that word
 Etymology: means the origin of the particular word
 Definitions: is a statement of the meaning of a term (a word, phrase, or other set
of symbols)
 Idioms: is a phrase or an expression that has a figurative, or sometimes
literal, meaning.

Personal knowledge acquired.

Having understood the way a dictionary is divided into, helped me use it effectively and in an
easy way by looking up words faster. I never paid attention to the phonetic symbols next to
every entry before. Now i can use them to say the words correctly for instance:

un·com·fort·a·ble /ˌənˈkəmfərdəb(ə)l,ˌənˈkəmftərbəl

bi·sul·fite /bīˈsəlˌfīt/
Since they are pronounced differently from Spanish, the phonetic symbols guide me to pronounce
them correctly. We learned that every part of the entry has its own purpose, for example we have
the word bitter; by looking at the entry we can tell it has four different meaning, depending the
context, plus and adverb (-adv), noun (bitter-ness) (-n)
Seccion 2

Previewing and prediction

We can preview and predict a Reading to save time and improve understanding, and it can be
done on books, electronic articles or text, essays, novels. Didactic Reading and so on. The
previewing and prediction has been divided into 6 steps easy to follow:

 Cover ilustration
 Title of the story
 Table of contents
 Background knowledge
 Picture clues
 Summary
 Text features (either bold, italics or underlined)
 Visual clues

We learned how to undertand a book or article without reading it completly, just by

following the previous steps for example

Book title “andansas y malandazas” by looking at the illustration cover, which despicts a
stray dog, we expect that the book is about a dog tale, moreover if by looking at the title we
deduce that the story is cheerful and yet gloomy. Since the book uses slang word such as
“chucho” we get the idea that book aforementioned narrates a salvadorean tale based on the
previous knowledge about salvadorean culture.