Making inferences

passive voice!.. “Um…let me think…in this paragraph I can see that the dead man was wealthy, that means he had a lot of money…but he died suddenly, and that attracte d the police to co[r]

Making

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

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-$3=$4) • The woman wanted to give him $3 for the

ticket but he declined

What if we don’t know how to make inferences?

• Tom: Are you free tonight? • Mary: yes

• Tom: I’ve two tickets for the concert • Mary: I see

• Tom: So…

• Mary: What?

Decoding inferences

• “Are you free tonight”= want to ask her to something

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)

In simple words, making inferences is…

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

Non-fiction text

Text type: News report

Activity 2

Inferring the meaning of unknown words

1st paragraph (example):

A wealthy local businessman was found dead yesterday at his home on The Pea k Police believe that Albert

Activity 2

Inferring the meaning of unknown words

1st paragraph (example):

A wealthy local businessman was found dead yesterday at his home on The Pea k Police believe that Albert

Sung, a jewellery shop owner, was murdered

died because of money?

discovered later, rather strange!

involving police 

perhaps he didn’t die naturally

“Um…let me think…in this paragraph I can see that the dead man was wealthy, that means he had a lot of money…but he died suddenly, and that attracte d the police to come…seems a bit strange, so I gue ss he didn’t die naturally At the end I spot the us e of passive voice, that means he didn’t cause the death himself, or die from an illness Perhaps he

was killed by someone.”

Remember, when using the

think aloud approach…

Guess result

Murdered =

Useful text types for teaching inferences

• 1) editorials (e.g by comparing the headli nes of newspapers reporting the same n ews)

• 2) documentary (e.g 60 mins plus)

 looking for the director’s point of view

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

Answer

Only three people went shopping: a

grandmother, a mother, and a daughter — but remember that the mother was the grandmother's daughter!