How Students Can Use BreWoF Method to Know the Meaning of Words in Comprehension Passages
The BreWoF method becomes handy when you are dealing with difficult words in an examination. Most especially English Language exams; students are many a time require to supply similar words or non-similar words to words provided.
In such instances it becomes so difficult to find your way through if you do not have any clues about what the meanings of the words are. But with BreWoF method, it allows students to find meaning of words even with difficult ones without using any dictionary.
Keep your attention as we try to know what this method is and how we can use it to help ourselves in examination. Not even native English speakers are able to have it easy when it comes to dealing with difficult words. This is why you need to read the entire write up as it is the only means to get you to absorb what it contains.
Pre-Tips
Few issues note before we box every up
This BreWoF method believes that no word has a meaning. Meanings are built around words only when they are used in sentences.
Also the word classes of words are not fixed, word class of a word is bound to change when the context of its usage is changed.
The above are the key issues to note about the BreWoF method.
Now what is the BreWoF method and how can we use it to find meaning of words used in English comprehension passages?
Introduction to BreWoF Method
The method is an acronym designed by writers of learnritehere after series of studies on the usage of words in comprehension passage. The method also made an inclusion of other methods already designed by others. What is unique about this BreWoF method is its ability to be used in all angles. Unlike others which are restricted to only one angle, the expanded form of the method is as follows;
Bre = Breakdown
Wo = Words Striking
F = Fetching.
These put together to form BreWoF
How to use the BreWoF method to find meaning of words in comprehension passages
How to use them
It should be noted that no single part of the BreWoF stands alone. They are work together and all must be applied to give the meaning of the word.
- Breaking down (Bre): this method requires students or learners to break words down. This is applied in cases where a word has prefix or suffix added to it. It could have only prefix or suffix or both. When this happens, you take the prefix or the suffix away. See the example below;
“The jury gave a tangible verdict with the defendant’s lawyer applauding her but the people witnessing the proceedings misconstrued the meaning of the judgment so they began protesting”.
The underlined word is, ‘misconstrued’. This word can be broken into many parts despite having only a prefix, which is ‘Mis’. In breaking this word; we will have
Mis
Cons-
True (d)
Now how does a high school student get to know the meaning of the word? After breaking them in this manner, pick them one at a time and try to see if you know the meaning of one or and here, the one which is familiar is ‘true’ (d). Now add the meaning of the prefix to the word.
Let’s do that, ‘mis’ means ‘not’; so we have not true. Right, we have a fair idea about the meaning of the word.
Read Sentence again
If you take reading of the sentence, it tells that even the lawyer of victim praised the judge. So the simple question here is, what will make someone praise another? That is when something is done right. You see the opposite this is what we have above (not true). We can confidently say the meaning of misconstrued is ‘taken to be untrue or taken differently’.
- Word striking (Wo): this is done by reading the entire lines of the paragraph where the word is found. Right away, the familiar word that strikes in mind is put into the sentence to find out if the meaning of the sentence will not changed. If it does or no word strikes, then you have to try the others parts of the method.
- Fetching (F): this method is based on the principle that the meanings of words are found in the sentence. They can only be fetched when scenarios are drawn from sentences making up the paragraphs. Especially where the word is found.
You do that by reading the lines above the position of the word and reading the lines below the position of the word. Let’s make use of the paragraph written above.
See paragraph below
“The jury gave a tangible verdict with the defendant’s lawyer applauding her but the people witnessing the proceedings misconstrued the meaning of the judgment so they began protesting”
Reading the lines before the position of the sentence tells the lawyer of victim agreed to the rulings of the judge and the lines below the position of the word also tells the people were in disagreement with the rulings.
Now the key questions which need to be answered are;
What will make a lawyer defending a victim to praise a judge while other people supporting the victim are protesting?
Lawyers and Judges are within the same working field and when both agree on terms it means everything is in order. This gives a clue that the people are protesting because they misinterpreted the jury’s judgement. So the meaning of the misconstrued can also be ‘misinterpreted.
Takeaways
Few recommendations, finding the meaning of words in sentences, pay close attention to conjunctions and how they are used. Some conjunctions expresses agreement, some disagree, some add up or through more lights to a word and some also expresses concessions. They are part of the keys to finding the meaning of words in English comprehension passages. Apply conjunctions when using the third method. In the statement above, the ‘but’ used in there expressed disagreement between the part parts of the paragraph.
Make sure the words you supply also matches with the one you are asked of. That is, they must agree with the word class of the word asked about. If it is a verb and it is in the past, yours too must be in the past and same is applicable to the other word classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.)
In short, the word must fit into the sentence.
Viola!! Now pick up your English comprehension books and start practising this method before exams kick start.
Thanks for your attention and we wish you a joyful learning.
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