In reading, what is the purpose of context clues when encountering an unfamiliar word?

• A. To determine the author's tone
• B. To infer the meaning of the word from surrounding text
• C. To identify word origin
• D. To memorize the word's spelling

Answer: (B)

When you meet an unfamiliar word, context clues help you deduce what it means by looking at the surrounding words and sentences. The nearby text often hints at meaning through definitions, restatements, comparisons, contrasts, or examples. This lets you figure out the word without stopping to look it up.

For example, if a sentence says, “The terrain was arid, with little rainfall and dry shrubs,” you can infer that arid means very dry, based on the clues in the sentence. The goal is to infer meaning from surrounding text, not to memorize spelling, learn the word’s origin, or judge the author’s tone directly from the word itself.

So the best answer is to infer the meaning of the word from the surrounding text.