What does the 'context clues' strategy entail for CASAS Level D?

• A. Using surrounding words and sentences to infer meanings or relationships.
• B. Relying on your prior knowledge without reading surrounding text.
• C. Memorizing dictionary entries for all key terms.
• D. Translating every sentence into your first language.

Answer: (C)

Context clues involve using the words and sentences around an unfamiliar term to figure out what it means or how ideas are connected. In practice, you look for hints like a definition nearby, a synonym or antonym, an example, or a cause-and-effect relationship that helps you deduce the sense of the word without stopping to look it up. For CASAS Level D, this means reading the surrounding text to infer meaning and to see how ideas relate to one another, so you can understand comprehension questions more accurately.

Using surrounding text to infer meaning is what this approach is all about. It’s not about depending on what you already know without reading the context, not about memorizing dictionary entries, and not about translating every sentence into your first language. Those methods skip the clues tucked into the text itself.