Teaching students to use context to determine word meaning is an example of what kind of strategy?

• A. Independent word learning strategy
• B. Direct instruction strategy
• C. Context clues strategy
• D. Rote memorization strategy

Answer: (A)

The idea here is using context clues to infer word meaning. Students learn to look at the surrounding sentences or paragraphs for hints—such as definitions tucked into appositive phrases, examples that illustrate the word, contrasts that show what it is not, or the overall idea of the passage—to figure out what a word means. This makes reading comprehension stronger and builds independence, because learners can unlock unfamiliar vocabulary directly from the text rather than stopping to look up every word. The other approaches don’t fit as well: relying on independent discovery without text cues isn’t specifically about using surrounding words; direct instruction focuses on explicit teaching of meanings, not inference from context; rote memorization depends on recalling stored definitions rather than using clues in the text.