I began to read the second part of Unit Two this weekend. I found I still had some weakness of words which I wasn’t familiar with. I didn’t know the meaning of “offensive”. ordinarily, I would be compelled to turn to the dictionary for help. At that time, I suddenly discovered that it was a parallel sentence. So I thought every short sentence had the same composition. In other words, the meaning of “offensive”, I proposed, was similar to “not acceptable” and “never nice”. In order to justify my supposal, I looked it up. As expected, the word of “offensive” means that highly irritating or annoying, unpleasant or disagreeable to the sense, disgusting.
When I read the seventh paragraph, the phrase “toots our own horn” attracted me. I knew “toot” means “blow” and “horn” is an instrument. But what did the total phrase(s) mean in the article? What was the relationship between “toot” and “horn”? I got a huge question in my mind. It occurred to me that “horn” was a loud and clear instrument. If someone tooted the horn, others would be easy to get it. Therefore, I made a proportion supposition that “toot our own horn” means praise ourselves.
After this process of reading, I get sorts of knowledge, especially manners of guessing words. When we face with a new word, we needn’t resort to the dictionary immediately; we should concentrate on the same elements which are on both side of a sentence instead. Or, we could make full use of imagination when we are puzzled by a phrase which most of words are familiar.
