Making Inferences

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Making Inferences
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Does it make sense to you?(warm-up task)

• He put down 10 at the window. The woman
  behind the window gave 4. The person next to
  him gave 3, but he gave it back to her. So,
  when they went inside, she bought him a large bag
  of popcorn.

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Possible inferences

• Man woman went on a date to the movie
• Ticket 3 each ? man paid for both himself and
  the woman (total 6).
• Man got the change back (10-3-34)
• The woman wanted to give him 3 for the ticket
  but he declined.
• Therefore, she bought popcorn to call it even.

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What if we dont know how to make inferences?

• Tom Are you free tonight?
• Mary yes.
• Tom Ive two tickets for the concert.
• Mary I see.
• Tom So
• Mary What?
• Tom Do you like to go with me?
• Mary Oh! Sounds good

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Decoding inferences

• Are you free tonight want to ask her to do
  something.
• Ive two tickets want to take her out to the
  cinema.

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• Definition

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Making inferences

• When a reader adds information that he or she
  already knows to what is stated, the reader is
  making an inference! Beech (2005)

It is a kind of guess!
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In simple words, making inferences is

• Reading between
• the lines!

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• Inside the classroom

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How to begin with the students?

• 1) use an everyday occurrence to demonstrate the
  idea of making inferences.
• 2) use a short piece of text and ask the students
  to annotate as many inferences as they can.
• 3) can use bumper stickers to write the internal
  text that comes from the external text
• 4) use the

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Non-fiction text

• Text type News report
• (Longman Express 2B)

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Activity 2Inferring the meaning of unknown words

• 1st paragraph (example)
• A wealthy local businessman was found dead
  yesterday at his home on The Peak. Police
  believe that Albert Sung, a jewellery
  shopowner, was murdered.

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Activity 2Inferring the meaning of unknown words
died because of money?

• 1st paragraph (example)
• A wealthy local businessman was found dead
  yesterday at his home on The Peak. Police
  believe that Albert Sung, a jewellery
  shopowner, was murdered.

involving police ? perhaps he didnt die naturally
passive voice!
discovered later, rather strange!
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• Umlet me thinkin this paragraph I can see
  that the dead man was wealthy, that means he had
  a lot of moneybut he died suddenly, and that
  attracted the police to comeseems a bit strange,
  so I guess he didnt die naturally. At the end I
  spot the use of passive voice, that means he
  didnt cause the death himself, or die from an
  illness. Perhaps... he was killed by someone.

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Remember, when using the
Dont be shy
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Guess result

• Murdered
• killed by someone!

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Useful text types for teaching inferences

• 1) editorials (e.g. by comparing the headlines of
  2 newspapers reporting the same news)
• 2) documentary (e.g. 60 mins. plus)
• ? looking for the directors point of view
• ? any biases?

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• Other means of learning to make inferences

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Using logic problems can help students develop
their ability to make inferences

• New Shoes
• One day, two mothers and two daughters went
  shopping for shoes. Their shopping spree was
  successful each bought a pair of shoes, and all
  together, they had three pairs. How is this
  possible?

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Answer

• Only three people went shopping a grandmother,
  a mother, and a daughter but remember that the
  mother was the grandmother's daughter!
• Source Little Brown, Zoom Zingers,
  p.49