Saturday, September 29, 2012

5:1 subsume

When and Where:  I found the word subsume from this week's reading "Friendly Texts and Text-Friendly Teachers," by Dreher and Singer (2001).

"...sentence length and word difficulty (Kiare, 1984). These two factors evidently subsume numerous structural and semantic features that make a text readable" (Dreher & Singer, 2001, p. 1).

Definition: to include or place within something larger or more comprehensive : encompass as a subordinate or component element

from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/subsume
 
In Context: Vocabulary words and their meanings are subsumed in the text, making it easier for students to comprehend its meaning.

Level of Familiarity: I have never heard this word before until I read it in the text.

Reflective Commentary: I picked this word because I never heard it before. While I would have understood it's general meaning through context clues, I still wanted to know its correct definition. While I would have assumed the word meant include, I wanted to see how my context skills were. I have been working on this strategy with my students for the past few days and I wanted to assess mine. Based on what I thought it meant and it's actual definition, I was correct. But it was interesting to learn that it also meant "place within something larger or more comprehensive." I would have not guessed that based on the sentence. Personally I think this is a word worth nothing and would be a great word to use instead of the word include, when talking about something being part of something larger.

No comments:

Post a Comment