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This column is for self-study or classroom use and gives guided help with reading the wide variety of writing styles and topics that appear as feature articles in the Bangkok Post. The lessons include background information, skill-building practice and vocabulary explanations.
January 4, 2005

Picture perfect

INTRODUCTION
The newspaper is obviously a great place to find and learn new words. Best of all, you can often do this quite painlessly without even using a dictionary.

There are many techniques for guessing an unfamiliar word and you will have a chance to try some of them in this lesson. Clearly, the biggest help will be the photographs in this lesson, but you will also need to guess some of the words by reading the captions (texts) that accompany the photographs. This process is known as guessing words from context and it is a skill you really should try to become good at when you learn a second language.

Activity

Look at the photographs and read the captions that accompany them. Then match the words with their meanings without using a dictionary.

Target words

1. _____ attic
2. _____ barrel
3. _____ clamp down on
4. _____ club
5. _____ compensation
6. _____ deaf
7. _____ decibel
8. _____ dome
9. _____ excessive
10. _____ meter
11. _____ mimic
12. _____ plaintiff
13. _____ portrait
14. _____ present
15. _____ reflect
16. _____ replica
17. _____ sculpture
18. _____ settle
19. _____ spiked
20. _____ stuff

Meanings

  1. to put an end to an argument or disagreement
  2. a heavy stick with one end thicker than other that is used as a weapon
  3. a work of art that is a solid figure or object made by shaping wood, stone, clay, metal, etc.
  4. to fill tightly
  5. a room or space just below the roof of a house
  6. unable to hear
  7. a piece of equipment that measures and records that amount of something
  8. to give something to someone in a formal way
  9. a round roof
  10. having thin objects with sharp points on the surface
  11. to take strict action in order to prevent something
  12. a large round container
  13. too much of something
  14. a person who makes a formal complaint against someone in a court of law
  15. payment received in return for harm done to you
  16. a unit for measuring how loud a sound is
  17. to show the image of something on the surface of something
  18. to look or behave like something else
  19. a very good or exact copy of something
  20. a painting, drawing or photograph of a person

Teachers

This is the kind of activity you can easily produce by yourself if you keep your past issues of the Bangkok Post. Just go back through them looking for photos and captions that allow your students to guess the meanings of unfamiliar words. Notice that while the photos are a big help, they alone will not allow the students to catch the meanings of all the words. They will need to read and think about the captions as well.


OUR STORIES FROM THE BANGKOK POST

Noise check

Bangkok Governor Apirak Kosayodhin, right, looks at the reading on a sound meter to make sure it is not over 90 decibels at a city bar on Saturday night. Authorities are clamping down on excessive noise after His Majesty the King expressed concern the nation's youth were going deaf from loud music.

Xmas symbol

The dome of the US Capitol and the Capitol Christmas tree is reflected on the Reflecting Pool in Washington

Bird drop

A airman stuffs paper birds into an open-ended barrel as they drop from a C-130 plane over Pattani.











The night watch

Men dressed as night watchmen armed with spiked clubs from the time of Hans Christian Andersen attend a Copenhagen opening of an attic where the famed Danish writer once lived.

Copy cats

Japanese children visiting Bangkok under a cultural exchange programme mimic a sculpture of characters from the Ramayana at the Temple of the Emerald Buddha.

Barge Replica

Deputy Interior Minister Pracha Maleenont, left, presents a glass replica of the royal barge Suphannahongsa to Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. It was made in Samut Prakan's Bang Phli district under the One Tambon One Product scheme.

Burying the past

Plaintiffs holding portraits of their dead relatives as they arrive with other people at the Sapporo High Court at Sapporo in northern Japan yesterday. The Japanese government and dozens of former miners and their relatives reached an agreement yesterday to settle a legal dispute by accepting a court proposal of state to pay compensation for lung problems suffered at a mine in the area decades ago.

• This lesson was prepared by Acharn Terry Fredrickson, BA Stanford, MA (TESL) University of Minnesota, Manager/Editor of the Learning Post at the Bangkok Post and general editor of this programme.

Read our other instant lesson here.

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Last modified: January 3, 2005