Teaching Inference and Drawing Conclusions Using Epigrams

Teaching inference and drawing conclusions using epigrams

An inference is an act or process of deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true. The conclusion drawn is also called an idiomatic. Inferencing using figurative or nonexplicit language.

Epigrams a pithy saying or remark expressing an idea in a clever and amusing way.

Epigrams can also be a short poem, especially a satirical one, having a witty or ingenious ending.

INFERENCING AND DRAWING CONLUSIONS QUESTION STEMS & SIGNAL WORDS:

What can you infer... 

Why do you believe...

How do you use the text to guess...

The text is referring to...

What is probably the meaning of the text....

How would you describe your thinking 

Why did you make that conclusion...

What clues do you use to infer...

What reasons can you give for your opinion...

In you judgment what is the authours...

What can you determine from the text...

Why or how did you draw that conclusion....

Why do you assume...

Do you feel that is the real meaning...

What can you hypothesize about...

Did you think that...

The Essentials of Our Language: A Guide to Accuracy in the Use of the English Language"

To gain new words and new ideas, the student must compel himself to read slowly. Impatient to hurry on and learn how the tale or poem ends, many a youth is accustomed to read so rapidly as to miss the best part of what the author is trying to say. Thoughts cannot be read so rapidly as words. To get at the thoughts and really to retain the valuable expressions, the student must scrutinize and ponder as he reads. Each word must be thoroughly understood; its exact value in the given sentence must be grasped.” George W. Rine

Reflect on the epigrams below until you see their significance their spicy aptness. Note the play on words in some of them. Some are also metaphorical. 

1 He spent his life trying to shoot big bullets from a small bored gun 

2 Verbosity is cured by a large vocabulary 

3 Some people are too foolish to commit folly 

4 By indignities, men come to dignities 

5 Unfortunate lady how sad is your lot Your ringlets are red your poems are not 

6 The favorite has no friends 

7 Never less alone than when alone 

8 It is a custom more honored in the breach than in the observance 

9 Language is the art of concealing thought 

10 A remedy worse than the disease 

11 He was conspicuous by his absence 

12 We can not see the woods for trees 

13 Not to know me argues yourself unknown 

14 Hell is paved with good intentions 

15 No pain no pleasure 

16 The first shall be last and the last first 

17 The half is greater than the whole  

18 Beauty when unadorned, adorned the most 

19 When you have nothing to say, say it 

20 The child is father to the man 

21 The valiant taste death but once 

22 He said so many things that he didn't t say anything 

Poetic epigrams

1. What is an Epigram? a dwarfish whole,Its body brevity, and wit its soul.— Samuel Taylor Coleridge 
2. Some can gaze and not be sickBut I could never learn the trick.There's this to say for blood and breath;They give a man a taste for death.— A. E. Housman
3. Little strokesFell great oaks.— Benjamin Franklin
4. Here lies my wife: here let her lie!Now she's at rest – and so am I.— John Dryden
5. I am His Highness' dog at Kew; Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?— Alexander Pope
6. I'm tired of Love: I'm still more tired of Rhyme. But Money gives me pleasure all the time.— Hilaire Belloc
7. I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.— Nikos Kazantzakis
8. To define the beautiful is to misunderstand it.— Charles Robert Anon 
9. This Humanist whom no belief constrained. Grew so broad-minded he was scatter-brained.— J.V. Cunningham
10. All things pass, Love and mankind is grass.— Stevie Smith
11. In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.—Albert Camus
12. It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.—Eleanor Roosevelt
13. If you can't be a good example, you'll just have to be a horrible warning.—Catherine the Great
14. Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.—Oscar Wilde
15. To err is human, but it feels divine.—Mae West
16. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.—Mohandas Gandhi
17. For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.—Virginia Woolf
18. He does not believe, who does not live according to his belief.—Sigmund Freud (perhaps the all-time best definition of hypocrisy)