Vocabulary in context

Vocabulary in context questions are a subcategory of craft and structure. They’re more rare than other question types and you’ll encounter them far less frequently than any of the other ACT Reading question types, but they’re still important to study.

Vocabulary in context questions have the following traits:

• They always ask you to interpret the meaning of a particular word or phrase
• They’re usually short, often no more than two lines long
• They often have a line number in the question

Here’s an example of a vocabulary in context question from an official test:

Notice that the question is asking you to interpret what the phrase “germ” means. This requires context or more information from the passage to figure out the answer.

For example, consider the word “court”. What came to mind? A basketball court, or a tennis court? Perhaps a court of law comes to mind, or even the act of courting (dating) someone. Without the context, there’s no way to know the meaning.

Context matters. In fact, for these questions, context matters more than your vocabulary. While developing an incredible vocabulary will certainly help, many of these questions can be answered without prior knowledge of the word/phrase.

Use this four-step technique to answer vocabulary in context questions:

1. Find the line in the passage. Often these questions will reference line numbers, so just use that to jump to the proper place.

2. Read a few lines above and below the referenced line. This will give you helpful context clues about the meaning of the word/phrase. The test will often purposefully give you words and phrases that have multiple meanings—understanding the context is crucial to getting the right answer!

3. Before reading the answer choices, think of a word or phrase that you would put instead of the one given. This helps anchor your thought process to the context so you don’t get misled by tricky choices. Once you have your own guess, look at the choices and pick the one closest in meaning.

4. Read the sentence again using the choice you picked to ensure that it makes sense when incorporated into the whole sentence.

Let’s put this into action with the example question you saw earlier—except this time, we’ll give you the context of the passage to help you answer the question. Notice how we’ve used annotations to help us pick out clues around the phrase!

Now, follow the steps to answer the question:

1. Read the line
2. Read the context around the line
3. Pick your own word/phrase, and then pick a matching answer choice
4. Plug your choice into the sentence to double-check it

What do you think is the best answer?

Even if the answer seems obvious to you, still follow the technique and go step by step! The answer choices are often intended to confuse you and lead you into incorrect snap decisions, but if you follow the process every time, you’ll build the habit and be able to make the best choice every time.