Strategies to Understand Words and Text: Literal and Figurative

Realidades
Nombre
Fecha
Lectura, pp. 364–365
Strategies to Understand Words and Text: Literal and
Figurative Language
It is impossible to know the meaning of every word or expression in a language. However,
good readers develop strategies to determine the meanings of unknown words or unusual
expressions that they encounter in their reading without having to look all of them up in
their dictionaries. Good readers also know that their guesses can often be wrong, so they
develop strategies to check their guesses. When making an educated guess about an
unusual word, good readers test their guess in context. In other words, they will insert
their guessed meaning into the actual sentence where they encountered the unusual word.
Poems, even those written in the simplest forms, often confuse readers. Many poetic
expressions can be interpreted in more than one way. On a first reading, a poem should be
read on a literal level. For example, if a line in the poem says, “The sky was black,” then
you could imagine a sky filled with dark storm clouds.
However, on a second or third reading, you should consider the different ways those
literal lines of poetry could be interpreted figuratively or creatively. For example, the line
“The sky was black” might suggest that the sky was filled with migrating birds, or maybe
it could suggest that the world seemed without hope on that day. Effective readers of
poetry know that their figurative interpretations of individual lines must make sense in
the overall context of the poem.
1. On pages 364 and 365 in your textbook, review the Lectura that contains the two poems
by Pablo Neruda. Then complete the chart below for the selected lines of poetry.
15 el tomate, invade las cocinas,
Possible Figurative Meanings
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Sample question:
2. In the poem “Oda al tomate” by Pablo Neruda, what is the most likely meaning of the
line, “En diciembre se desata el tomate, invade las cocinas...”?
A Christmas, often represented by the color red, arrives every year in December.
B Every December Chile’s tomato festival is celebrated with a big outdoor tomato
fight.
C Chile’s first tomato crop arrives in December, and everyone buys the tomatoes.
D A flood of tomato-colored river water fills the streets of Chile in December.
26 Capítulo 7A
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25 [el tomate] Tiene luz propia,
majestad benigna.
28 Debemos, por desgracia,
asesinarlo;
41 [el tomate] se casa alegremente
con la clara cebolla,
Literal Meaning