ELT365 · Day 176 — The role of context in comprehension

Idea — Context — who is speaking, where, and why — dramatically reduces the linguistic work required to understand a message. Providing context before a listening or reading task is not cheating; it is replicating real communication.

Example — Knowing you are about to hear a landlord leaving a voicemail means the word ‘deposit’ is instantly understood; without context, it could mean a bank transaction.

Try — Before your next listening, give learners one sentence of context only. Measure whether comprehension improves compared to no context. Debrief what changed.

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