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Activity 2 Generating meanings from a variety of texts

Did you
FOR ONLINE READING ONLY
know

When we read, we sometimes come across words we do not understand.
Instead of skipping them or immediately looking them up in a dictionary, we
can use context clues to determine their meanings. Context clues are hints
found in words, phrases or sentences around an unfamiliar word. These clues
help us guess the meaning without needing a direct definition. Writers may
sometimes directly explain the word’s meaning. For example, “The ground
is damp and slightly wet from the morning rain.” In this sentence, you can
understand the meaning of damp from the explanation provided. Writers also
use synonyms. A synonym is a word that has the same or nearly the same
meaning as another word. For instance, “As she continued to work, she saw
an enormous tree.” Here, the word enormous means very large. The phrase
“as big as a house” is a synonym for very big or huge. Antonyms, words with
opposite meanings, can also be used as clues. For example, “The stormy
weather was the opposite of the calm morning she had enjoyed earlier.” In
this sentence, “the opposite of calm” helps us understand that “stormy” is the
opposite of calm.

(a) Read the following passage and find the synonyms of words in boldface.

Kazi was a young giraffe who lived in the heart of the African savannah
and loved to explore the vast expanse. While nibbling on some tender acacia
leaves one day, he noticed a small, frightened zebra named Zuri, hiding behind
a thicket. Zuri had wandered too far from her herd and could not find her way
back. With his long neck, Kazi saw the distant shapes of the zebra herd and
offered to help. He gently bent down and told Zuri to climb on his back. With
a bit of trepidation, Zuri hopped onto Kazi’s broad back, and together, they
began the long odyssey to reunite Zuri with her family.

As they walked through the savannah, the pair encountered many animals,
from playful monkeys swinging in the trees to proud lions resting under the
shade of a monolithic baobab tree. Kazi shared tales of the savannah wonders

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