Problems working out new vocab when reading

[renshanrenhai]

Sally, while I appreciate that you're trying to help here, we're not actually idiots.

I didn't mean it.

I just hadn't the mind to figure out why it is so hard to get the meaning of "关键词"before, as we absorb the vocabulary in our L1 other than learn it. So i take it for granted that it's very easy to work out the meaning of "关键词"once we take it as a whole.

Certainly some words are obvious from their componant parts. But overall, until one reaches a certain point (and I'll let you know what that point is when I reach it!), I think it is to be expected that one needs to look up new words, even when one knows the characters.

This is a great point and really hits the head on its nail. Chinese character is so polysemous that working out their meaning from every single character don't work all the time. I remember when were learning Chinese in primary school, we wrote and remembered the meaning of a vocabulary(two character or three or four) rather than every single character.

"发" is another good example.

Though you know all the meaning of "发", you might still feel not easy to get all the meaning of these vocabulary "发展"、"发现"、"发财" 、"发放"、"发行"ect, if you come across them for the first time.

[roddy]

Here's another one: 运动狩猎. First read: Eh? Movement hunting? The hunting movement? Active hunting? Ah, I'll look it up later. Two days later, without even thinking about it: Ah, sport hunting!

[wezel]

I have found "google translate" to work pretty well most of the time. Another nice thing about it is that it can also do phrases, sentnences, paragraphs etc. Whille I can't always understand completely the translation given, when I fiddle around with "alternate translations, grammar, sentence construction etc., I can get the meaning most of the time. This is most helpful, as I can see the words in context as well.

[Guest realmayo]

Here's another: 车主 -- feel daft for not working out its meaning just now. The more I think about it the more I think part of the problem is I know there are words or phrases with set meanings that you could never really guess, but when I come across a new word that is in fact guessable I still think there's no point bothering because I figure there's no point.

[jkhsu]

but when I come across a new word that is in fact guessable I still think there's no point bothering because I figure there's no point.

From my experience, the mistake I often make is I would assume I know the meaning of a word because I know the characters and then realize later when I do check the dictionary that the meaning is slightly different from what I had thought. But that slight difference often makes a bigger difference in the context where the word was used. So while guessing is a good skill, always checking to make sure you have it right is a good habit.

[yellowpower]

From my experience, the mistake I often make is I would assume I know the meaning of a word because I know the characters and then realize later when I do check the dictionary that the meaning is slightly different from what I had thought. But that slight difference often makes a bigger difference in the context where the word was used. So while guessing is a good skill, always checking to make sure you have it right is a good habit

yes, totally agree...sometimes the word/phrase can be used metaphorically or in a special way apart from its original meaning. So checking context and other grammar points or supporting phrases/verbs is critical. If time permits I will then google the word to see how it's used in another sentence or context, this sometimes makes the meaning even clearer and stick to your memory!