VS 2A 2009 English Language Blog

Recap
This type of question requires you to give either a synonym or definition for the word within the context of the passage and in the same part of speech (e.g. the noun, verb or adjectival form).

The starting point for successful answering of vocab questions is a correct understanding of the text as a whole, and the gist of the specific paragraph. [You must give the contextual meaning.]

Tips
When you get words that you have no idea of their meaning, use the following tips:

1. Look for contextual clues - locate the sentence/ paragraph containing the word, look for clues relating to the word and deduce the meaning of the vocab word (e.g. from a list of synonyms, a pair of words with contrasting meaning - such as "intuition and practice")
2. Break word into prefix-root word-suffix and analyse each part - e.g., infallible= in + fail + able --- in = not, fail = to fall short of success, able = capable of---thus infallible = not capable of failing (for list of suffixes and prefixes, visit http://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/prefixtext.htm).