Word guessing refers to a method of reading in which a beginner reader does not know what a word is in a sentence, so they guess what the word is and read the rest of the sentence to confirm their guess.
In the English pangram, "The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog", if the reader isn't familiar with the word "jumped", then they might read it as "joom-ped". After reading the rest of the sentence, they may realize that the word was actually the past tense of "jump".
A reader may also use images, like the one above, to deduce the meaning of the sentence. Pictures can be use to offer clues to the meaning of a word.
Word guessing has been suggested as a method for teaching English-language learners (ELL) that fosters semantic mapping. Primary-school teachers, on the other hand, have criticized the strategy for creating bad habits and not teaching young readers about phonics.