the effectiveness of word meaning guessing in context on reading comprehension among grade 11 students of duong van duong high school

LE THI HOAI THU THE EFFECTIVENESS OF WORD-MEANING GUESSING IN CONTEXT ON READING COMPREHENSION AMONG GRADE 11 STUDENTS OF DUONG VAN DUONG HIGH SCHOOL Major: Teaching English to Speaker

LE THI HOAI THU

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF WORD-MEANING GUESSING IN CONTEXT ON READING COMPREHENSION AMONG

GRADE 11 STUDENTS OF DUONG VAN DUONG HIGH SCHOOL

MASTER’S THESIS OF TESOL

Ho Chi Minh City, 2019

LE THI HOAI THU

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF WORD-MEANING GUESSING IN CONTEXT ON READING COMPREHENSION AMONG

GRADE 11 STUDENTS OF DUONG VAN DUONG HIGH SCHOOL

Major: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)

ID: 60 14 01 11

MASTER’S THESIS OF TESOL

SUPERVISOR:

HUYNH CONG MINH HUNG, Ph.D

Ho Chi Minh City, 2019

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

This chapter works as an introduction to the research It starts with the background of the study, followed by the statement of the problem Then, the significance of the study is emphasized to highlight some contributions to reading comprehension After that, the overall structure of the study is given with the main focus for each chapter

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Reading, considered as the window of the world, is a foundation skill for learning Reading is one of four main language skills that learners need to master to

be able to communicate in English situations Reading is not only the ability to draw meaning from the text but also the ability to interpret the information implied in the text (Grabe & Stoller, 2002) In order to get meaning from what they read, learners are in need of accumulating a large number of words in their vocabularies It is stated that vocabulary knowledge is in a close relationship with reading proficiency and strong vocabulary can enhance learners’ comprehension of reading materials Absolutely, deficiencies in vocabulary may make even a simple task become difficult for readers

Oxford (1990) states that it is impossible for EFL students to understand every lexical item in a reading passage While reading students sometimes meet some unknown words; and they tend to look up the meanings of these words from the dictionary instead of guessing According to Horst, Cobb and Meara (1998), it is possible for second language learners to infer from context while reading It has been proved that the strategy of word guessing in context brings a lot of benefits to comprehending the meaning of a reading text (Kanatlar & Peker, 2009) In other words, it is believed to be a useful tool in improving reading comprehension (Shokouhi and Askari, 2010) Prince (1996) mentions three benefits of learning from context including developing learners’ strategies, meeting words in discourse and indicating the use of words To put it simply, the more students understand the

implied word meaning, the more they can enhance reading comprehension In addition, compared to the use of dictionary, guessing is believed not to interfere the flow of reading (Brown, 1972) and to provide a contextualized meaning (Rhoder & Huerster, 2002) as well as to intensify the comprehension (Haynes, 1984, as cited in Kanatlar & Peker, 2009) Therefore, students should be taught the words’ meanings

in context through the use of guessing strategies

However, the reality is that most of the classrooms in Vietnamese high schools are teacher-centered and the use of contexts has not been much applied, which makes reading comprehension more difficult for students As we have known, in conventional EFL classrooms, an emphasis is often placed on reading skill and grammar Nevertheless, vocabulary items, reading comprehension and grammatical points are still taught through Grammar-Translation Method (GTM) The method is not much appropriate in educational program nowadays and it is not student-centered; thus, this method is unable to arouse much interest among students It is undeniable that teachers spend most of the time in class exploiting textbook passages, completing the reading tasks, presenting structures and giving students further grammar practice

In this situation, teachers cannot be blamed completely because this is the unavoidable consequence of the examination-oriented tendency At a high school in the Vietnamese educational system, beside a sequence of tests during the school year, students have to confront the graduation examination and they can enter universities

or colleges after that

Therefore, in order to assist students in learning reading as well as increase their motivation there is an urgent need for improving the teaching method As a result, the present study aims to explore the effectiveness of context clues on reading comprehension among EFL students in Vietnamese high schools and improve their reading skills as well

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PURPOSE

The purpose of the study is twofold First, this study investigates the feasibility

of word-meaning guessing in context to improve the eleventh graders’ reading comprehension in Duong Van Duong high school Secondly, students’ attitudes towards the application of word-meaning guessing is also explored by the questionnaire

The study is limited to high school students of grade 11 only at Duong Van Duong high school To begin with, by means of an experimental study, it investigates the difference between the CG with the direct teaching of vocabulary and the EG with the instructions on word guessing strategies The students receive training on necessary context clues for guessing such as definitions, synonyms, antonyms, comparison and contrast, etc to derive the meaning of new items Moreover, the students’ attitudes towards the word guessing are explored by the questionnaire after they are trained how to apply word guessing strategies into reading comprehension

It is necessary to know students’ perceptions towards the new technique, compared

to the traditional way From that, the teacher knows how much students have learnt from that technique or any difficulties they may encounter in their learning Consequently, the teacher gives better solutions to help students get successful in acquiring new vocabulary and improving reading comprehension For example, it is the teacher who can make adaptations to appropriate materials or strategies concerning students’ level proficiency or students’ preferences

1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

In investigating the effectiveness of word meaning guessing in context to help students with their reading comprehension, the researcher has formulated the research questions:

a To what extent does word-meaning guessing in context have any effects on students’ reading comprehension?

b What are the students’ attitudes towards word-meaning guessing in context?

1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The significance of this research lies in the efficiency of the guessing instruction when it is applied on a practical basis Although several studies were carried out to investigate the effectiveness of using guessing strategies to vocabulary learning in enhancing reading comprehension, there are only a few focusing on high school contexts and exploring high-school students’ attitudes towards this method Clearly, word guessing is not new in the teaching context, but the idea of using this technique is still not widely used in many cases of high school, especially Duong Van Duong high school Moreover, the reality is that students are still not given any explicit instructions on how to use word guessing strategies in the current textbook Therefore, they do not get used to taking advantage of those techniques in their reading practices In order to promote students’ reading ability, this study is conducted If the implementation of this method gets satisfactory results, students can get better achievement in reading comprehension In addition, teachers may receive the benefits of the research They know students’ difficulties while reading and students’ attitudes towards the guessing strategy so that they can develop their own teaching methods From that, teachers consider how to choose appropriate types of materials and design activities in order to improve students’ reading competence One more thing is that researchers may carry out further studies into related issues based

on the results of the current study

1.5 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY

The overall structure of the thesis takes the form of five chapters as follows: Chapter 1, introduction, emphasizes the importance of reading skill in EFL classroom and the current situation of teaching practices in Vietnamese high school environment

It provides background of the study, statement of the purpose, research questions, significance of the study and it gives direction to the whole paper Chapter 2 begins

by laying out the theoretical background of the research and looks back how the empirical studies have been carried out to investigate the effectiveness of guessing

strategy on reading comprehension Chapter 3 presents the methodology employed

in the research, including research site, materials, analytical framework, teaching procedure and measure instruments Besides, the validity and reliability of the study

is also discussed Chapter 4 works carefully on the analysis and interpretation of the data collected from the instrument, namely pre-test, post-test and the questionnaire Then, the findings from the data analysis are discussed Chapter 5 gives the conclusion to the thesis, with the strengths, limitations of the study as well as the recommendation for further studies in the future

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter aims at reviewing the related literature It comprises of two main parts, namely the theoretical background and the previous study In the theoretical background of the study, it is divided into four sections including reading comprehension, reading strategies, an overview of context-based approach and context clues Then, some research works contributing to the present study are presented Before the summary of the study is given, research gaps are indicated to bridge the gaps of the study

2.2 THEORETICAL BACKROUND

2.2.1 READING COMPREHENSION

2.2.1.1 THE PURPOSE OF READING

Reading can be served as a variety of purposes For example, reading can be for pleasure or general understanding Besides, in some cases, reading requires more attention to focus on details of the text, which is supposed to be the most challenging for L2 learners It is the type of reading that affects how we read and what we read for Schmitt (2010) states that L2 readers often need to develop “reading for understanding” and “reading to learn” (p 216) It can be seen clearly that learning reading is not only learning how to recognize words but also learning how to make texts understood (Tierney & Readence, 2005) because it is “the process of making meaning from text” (Woolley, 2011, p.15) In other words, from text, the reader can find out the information mentioned by the writer In addition to the ability of reading and remembering, the reader can learn from as well as find meaning in text for later use (Souvignier & Moklesgerami, 2006)

2.2.1.2 THE IMPORTANCE OF READING

Reading is considered the most important skill for second language learners (Lynch & Hudson, 1991) and is one of the primary goals of early education (Hume

& Snowling, 2011) Reading has attracted much attention from many researchers and experts due to several reasons (Richards & Renandya, 2002) Firstly, reading serves different purposes such as knowledge, career or educational purposes In fact, the ability in reading a foreign language is quite necessary in most EFL situations It is

an essential skill for a competent learner in today’s society (Human Resources and Social Development Canada, 2003) For pedagogical purposes, reading enhances language acquisition as well as writing samples Secondly, by reading, learners can make a connection with other skills like grammar, vocabulary or speaking To put it simply, reading is an interactive process of communication Finally, reading can promote learning and be an instrument by which learners can use to study other subjects (Far, Nurianfar & Gowhary, 2014) It all points to a conclusion that reading

is a vital skill not only for the mental development but also the learners’ academic achievement

2.2.1.3 DEFINITION OF READING COMPREHENSION

Reading has been given its definition by many researchers or experts As mentioned above, reading is a very important skill which cannot be separated from other skills as well as the process of teaching and learning a foreign language Until the mid-1970’s, reading was just the recognition of messages from the author by decoding the words (Adams & Collins, 1977; McKeown, 1990) Then, both explicit and implicit meanings of the text were gradually paid much care to by the readers This means that the information which the readers derive may come from what the author directly says and what is integrated with the readers’ existing experience To clarify, the readers can make the inferences to uncover the deeper meaning of the text based on these existing knowledge (Hirsch, 2003)

Currently, the relationship between the text and the reader’s prior knowledge

is often mentioned in most definitions of reading comprehension (Alfassi, 2004; Meneghetti, Carretti & De Beni, 2006, as cited in Kroner’s 2012) According to Falk-Ross (2001), “reading is a number of interactive processes between the reader and the text, in which readers use their knowledge to build, to create, and to construct meaning” (p 278) In other words, in this process, the meaning is elicited when the reader communicates with the text In order to make sense of the text, the reader needs

to connect information from printed materials with prior knowledge (Day & Bamford, 2010) There is no denying that reading is considered a complex process in which a reader uses his capacities to construct meaning from written or printed message

2.2.1.4 ELEMENTS OF READING COMPREHENSION

According to Snow & Sweet (2003), comprehension involves three components, including the reader, the text and the activity The reader is the person who is doing the comprehending, the text is what needs to be comprehended and the activity is a part of comprehension

Firstly, in terms of the reader, the authors mean readers’ abilities and knowledge to comprehend the text To enable reading comprehension, the reader needs to be equipped with cognitive capacities (e.g., memory, critical ability, inferencing…), motivation (purpose and interest for reading) and other knowledge areas (vocabulary, discourse, comprehension strategies) It is clear that the reader’s abilities and knowledge will vary according to the text in use and the activity that he

or she is engaged in Furthermore, appropriate instruction from the teacher will be really helpful for the reader in recognizing which capacities can be used for which types of texts and activities Secondly, the text is the printed or electronic text which the reader needs to comprehend There are a variety of representations of the text that the reader constructs during reading For example, the surface code (exact wording), the text base (idea units) and mental models The text can be easy or difficult depending on the knowledge of the reader and the activities Last but not least, the

activity consists of purposes and processes of reading involving decoding the text, higher-level linguistic and semantic processing, and self-monitoring for comprehension In conclusion, reader, text and activity are incorporated and interacted with one another during reading

2.2.1.5 LEVELS OF READING COMPREHENSION

To understand how readers comprehend the text, Barrett (as cited in Clymer, 1968) developed a simple three-level taxonomy Literal or factual comprehension is the first level in which readers understand simple information that is clearly stated in the text itself The message from the writer is only received, not evaluated or examined The implied information is referred as the second level called inferential comprehension At this level, the reader is able to go beyond the pages to infer ideas from other details of the text The reader can use information effectively to make comparison, recognize the causes and effects as well as interpret the implied messages Barrett’s third level is critical or evaluative comprehension that requires readers to make judgments about the text like the author’s attitudes, the literary quality of the text and so on At this more demanding level, the reader evaluates the writer’s opinions by accepting, rejecting, synthesize or applying information to other information

Likewise, reading comprehension is conceptualized at different levels as literal, inferential and critical (Westwood, 2008) Heilman (1981) also presents the same idea of reading comprehension levels as literal, interpretive, applied and critical comprehension In addition, Vora (2006) discusses it in more details, comprehension consists of six categories: literal or factual, reorganization, inferential, prediction, critical or evaluative and appreciation

Generally, reading comprehension is quite a complex process which requires

a number of ways to construct meaning from the text In order to attain all levels of comprehension, it is necessary for readers to understand the top-down and bottom-up processing which are presented in the next section

2.2.1.6 THE SCHEMA THEORY

According to Rumelhart (1980), schema theory is an interpretation for using prior knowledge to comprehend the text from readers The term “schema” was first used as “an active organization of past reactions or experiences” (Barlett, 1932, p.201) Rumelhart (1980) defined it as “data structure for representing the genetic concepts stored in memory” (p.34) Anderson and Pearson (1984) mentioned it as “an abstract knowledge structure” (p.42) whereas the definition “a general knowledge structure used for understanding” came from Medin and Russ (1962, p.246, as cited

in An, 2013) Later, “schema” was introduced in reading by other researchers when the importance of background knowledge was emphasised Additionally, An (2013) states that a text, not evoking meaning by itself, just gives guidance to readers in constructing meaning from their own knowledge

As stated earlier, beside a reading text, readers’ knowledge or experiences will altogether contribute to how readers construct meaning for comprehension (Nunan, 2001; Wachyunni, 2015) Koda (2005) states that “comprehension occurs when the reader extracts and integrates various information from the text and combines it with what is already known” (p 4) Mikulecky (2008) also shares her view:

Reading is a conscious and unconscious thinking process The reader applies many strategies to reconstruct the meaning that the author is assumed to have intended The reader does this by comparing information in the text to his or her background knowledge and prior experience (p 1)

As can be seen, background knowledge plays an important role which cannot

be ignored in reading comprehension According to the schema theory, comprehension is a combination of a bottom-up and a top-down process which is a two-way one integrating information from the text with information from previously acquired knowledge While a bottom-up process is described by applying specific data like letters, words and text, the reader’s knowledge and problem-solving skills are required to interpret the meaning in a top-down process

 A Top-down Process

In top-down processing, the readers get main ideas of the text by absorbing an overall picture (Harmer, 2008) At first, the readers begin with a set of assumptions

or get a general overview of the text; and then they determine whether their predictions are correct or not during the reading practice (Nunan, 2001; Eskey, 2005)

It is proved that this kind of model is quite useful for the advanced language learners thanks to their ability in decoding graphics instantly and easily (Škudienė, 2002) In other words, a top-down model is a process in which readers work from the largest elements towards smaller ones to grasp comprehension

 A Bottom-up Process

On the other hand, in bottom-up reading model, reading proceeds from part to the whole, from letter to sound, to words, to meaning (Gough, 1972); linguistic clues are emphasized and literal comprehension is built (Swaffer, Arans & Byrnes, 1991) Readers need to take advantage of their knowledge of lexical items, structural points and phonological patterns to extract the meaning of the text (Fatemi, Vahedi, & Seyyedrezaie, 2014) As mentioned above, while a top-down process is much suitable for higher levels, a bottom-up process is for elementary levels Generally, a bottom-

up model is a process that readers builds up comprehension from the smallest elements

 Integration of a Top-down and a Bottom-up Process

The significance of both two-reading processing has been confirmed by many previous studies (Tsui & Fullilove, 1998) As revealed, reading comprehension is a dynamic process which utilizing both top-down and bottom-up model for extracting

or constructing information In a study conducted on intermediate language learners

by Škudienė (2002), most of pre- and while-reading activities were based on a down process; a bottom-up process was utilized in post-reading practice For instance, learners can make use of their knowledge of writing style to predict what is in the text (top-down) and guess the meaning of the words based on the understanding of prefix and suffix (bottom-up) Also, Haradasht & Baradaran (2013) investigated the effect

top-of two models on reading comprehension among extrovert and introvert immediate Iranian learners The results showed that the introvert group much benefitted from a bottom-up process whereas the extrovert group benefitted from a top-down process While other earlier studies mentioned overall achievement of learners, the study paid much attention to personality traits Furthermore, Fatemi, Vahedi & Seyyedrezaie (2014) examined to seek the effects of top-down/ bottom-up process and field-dependent (FD)/ field-independent (FI) cognitive style on Iranian freshmen The results revealed that FD learners outperformed FI in top-down instruction and FI were more successful in bottom-up model Méndez & Llivigañay (2017) conducted a study

to search for an appropriate methodology based on the schema theory and its

bottom-up and top-down processing to teach reading in EFL classroom The questionnaire was carried out on the ninth-grade students of the Técnico Salesiano high school; and then guided reading activities were developed for teachers to facilitate reading In a nutshell, it is better not to discuss which process, top-down or bottom-up, is the best for reading development It is said that both reading processing should work together

in a successful reading We can see that readers examine the written text by letters and words to construct meaning; hence, their background knowledge is needed to comprehend the text more easily

In general, comprehension is more complicated than a matter of just reading the words It involves the reader in combining background knowledge with reading skills to attempt to make the reading passage comprehensible Therefore, L2 learners need to be provided with the reading strategies to enhance their reading comprehension

2.2.2 READING STRATEGIES

2.2.2.1 DEFINITION OF READING STRATEGIES

Reading strategies are quite essential for learners to be skilled readers; and equipping learners with reading instructions is pointed out to be very necessary in every reading lesson (Grabe & Stoller, 2001) Pearson (1992) define reading

comprehension strategies as “conscious and flexible plans that readers apply and

adapt to a variety of texts and tasks” (cited in Allen, 2003, p 321) Similarly, reading

strategy is a series of actions that the readers select and use to make sense what they read (Kletzien, 1991) In this sense, they are tools that readers can employ to

accomplish reading tasks encountered in texts Clearly, it will be necessary if learners

know reading strategies, a set of methods and techniques, in order to achieve better understanding For example, according to Barnett (1988), there are twenty reading strategies that learners could use to identify the meaning Furthermore, Curtis (2002) lists a number of skills for the reader to utilize to gain reading comprehension such

as deciding the main idea, making and answering questions based on context clues, and summarizing the text In conclusion, applying suitable reading strategies helps the reader comprehend the reading materials better

2.2.2.2 CLASSIFICATION OF READING STRATEGIES

Many researchers have categorized reading strategies into different types or different terms Some identify two types of reading strategies including strategies for constructing meaning and those for monitoring meaning (Ebrahimi, 2012) From Block (1986) and Carrell (1989), reading strategies are classified into global and local strategies While local focus on decoding strategies, global involve in top-down types

of reading such as getting the gist, using background knowledge and identifying text organization In particular, according to Parreren & Van Parreren (1981), reading strategies are divided into six types, including recognizing text type; recognizing text structure; predicting or summarizing the context of the text; making guesses; using the context to determine the meaning of unknown words and analyzing the word form

of unknown words Others mention reading strategies using different terms For example, Anderson, et al (1984) groups the strategies into five, consisting of supervising, supporting, paraphrasing, establishing coherence and test-taking

The classification scheme that is used in the present study is based on Oxford (1990) Reading strategies are classified into six types including cognitive, memory,

compensation, metacognitive, affective and social strategies Among these strategies, cognitive and metacognitive strategies are the most widely used by L2 readers (Richards, 1990; Allen, 2003; Ozek & Civelek, 2006) While metacognitive strategies are higher skills which are related to planning, monitoring or evaluating the reading task, cognitive strategies are related to readers’ previous knowledge and other strategies to construct meaning for comprehension, according to Pang (2008) These cognitive strategies are considered as the actions and procedures which readers take when dealing with the text (Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001), containing adjusting readers’ speed, guessing meaning of unknown words and pre-reading To be detailed, according to Brown (2007, p.35), following are the common cognitive strategies:

 Translation: using L1 to understand the topic in L2

 Grouping: reordering and reclassifying the material

 Note-taking: give the outline or main ideas

 Deduction: making use of rules to understand the topic

 Imaginery: combining visual concepts in memory with new knowledge

 Keyword: remembering a new word in L2 which sounds like a familiar word in L1

 Contextualization: putting a word in a meaningful context

 Elaboration: relating new information with concepts in mind

 Inferencing: Using available information to guess meanings of new words

Guessing the meanings of unknown words through texts, a single cognitive reading strategy, is mainly discussed below for the purpose of the thesis In the next section, there are some points that should be emphasized before the discussion of the guessing strategy The role of vocabulary and its importance in reading comprehension needs to be thoroughly exploited so that we can recognize the impact

of the guessing strategy on vocabulary acquisition After that, context clues are pointed out very carefully since they are main indicators of the strategy of guessing Without them, it would be more difficult for readers to have correct guessing

2.2.3 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN VOCABULARY KNOWLEDGE AND READING COMPREHENSION

There is a correlation between reading comprehension and vocabulary acquisition in EFL context (Schmitt, 2000) It is said that this is a reciprocal relationship, not one directional way, in which vocabulary knowledge can help reading easier and reading can promote vocabulary development (Kamil & Heibert, 2005)

Figure 2.1 The Cyclical Relationship of Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary Enhancement (Kamil & Heibert, 2005, p 33)

Studies revealed that vocabulary knowledge has been considered the major component to reach reading comprehension (Ouellette & Beers, 2010; Wachyunni, 2015) Vocabulary knowledge is the element to communicate between the writer and the text through text In other words, the success of reading comprehension is determined by the importance of vocabulary In a study of Kameli and Bali (2013), it

is found that there was a positive relationship between knowledge of vocabulary and successful reading comprehension Also, H.M and Rahim (2015) conducts a study on

10 Malaysian high school students who did the reading comprehension test and vocabulary test in L1 and L2; and then they had a brief interview after finishing tests The findings showed that the students lacked vocabulary knowledge in L2 in comparison with L1; and the role of vocabulary was reported to have a significant impact on reading comprehension In line with Language and Reading Research Consortium (2015), it was demonstrated that vocabulary knowledge influenced reading comprehension growth among first, second and third graders It is obvious that the limitation in vocabulary knowledge will definitely lead to poor reading comprehension

We can see that unfamiliar or unknown words in the reading text will hinder L2 readers from understanding the embedded meaning Clearly, providing that readers do not know many words in a text, it will lead to inefficiency in text processing Hu and Nation (2000) also held the same opinion on difficulties that the amount of new words cause in a reading passage Moreover, L2 readers may have a tendency towards ignoring the new or difficult lexical items which cause them confused in figuring out the meaning of the text Consequently, the meaning lying under the text will be made wrong or inappropriate If the readers have greater existing vocabulary, they become more efficient at gaining the meaning (Goerss et al., 1999) There is no doubt that the more vocabulary knowledge learners master, the more comprehensible they get Therefore, providing learners with vocabulary instruction is pointed out to be helpful in improving learners’ reading comprehension skills (Curtis & Longo, 2001, as cited in H.M & Rahim, 2015) To clarify, they should

be given explicit instruction on key words from text and be taught strategies to learn words independently (Loftus & Coyne, 2013)

2.2.3.2 THE VOCABULARY ACQUISITION THROUGH READING COMPREHENSION

It is clear that learners tend to expand their vocabulary knowledge more in reading comprehension (Nagy & Herman, 1987; Anderson et al., 1988; Nagy, 1988)

To put it differently, reading is a useful tool for vocabulary development (Schmitt & Schmitt, 1985; Huckin & Coady, 1999) Laufer (2003) states that the major source for vocabulary acquisition comes from reading It can be easily seen that while reading, learners are advised to look at the unknown words and make efforts to guess the meaning from clues in the surrounding context This technique is called (lexical) inferencing, a comprehension skill, which is considered a means of vocabulary learning (Cain, 2007) It is considered the most commonly used technique by L2 readers to extract meaning when encountering unfamiliar words (Deschambault, 2012) As a result, vocabulary words can be strengthened by accumulating in learners’ minds Kuo (2008) reported that the size of vocabulary of EFL learners was much increased by lexical inferencing instruction Qian’s study (2005) stated that there was

a positive existing relationship between learners’ vocabulary knowledge and their lexical inferencing ability In general, it is essential to equip learners with inferencing strategies in order that they can make use of these strategies for guessing when facing difficult lexical items in reading To put it simply, learners who are better at inferencing will acquire more new words and obviously, better vocabulary will support better reading

2.2.3.3 A SHORT CONCLUSION

In summary, broadening the amount of vocabulary will have a huge impact on reading comprehension and applying appropriate reading strategies to infer the meaning of new words is quite necessary Definitely, both concepts are interdependent: learners can develop vocabulary knowledge through reading and the new-found vocabulary will be later employed to promote reading (Oakhill et al., 2014) In addition, to achieve successful guessing from context, readers need to know what context is and what the types of context are These issues will be presented in the next section

2.2.4 AN OVERVIEW OF CONTEXT

2.2.4.1 DEFINITION OF CONTEXT

Context has been found in many definitions, but some of them have been selected for the purpose of the present study Context means textual or discoursal place in which a particular word or structure can be found (Gu, 2003) Context can

be a sentence of even some paragraphs which unknown or unfamiliar words are usually in Context can be verbal (grammatical and semantics) and nonverbal (situating, descriptive, subjective and global context) (Engelbart & Theuerkauf, 1999) A context can refer to the general situation or circumstances concerning an idea, a statement or an event which helps readers understand the meanings (Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 2001) Moreover, context is also defined as immediate linguistic environment where a certain word happens; this word may be lain within neighbors surrounding it (Miller & Leacok, 2000)

As can be seen, we can state that a context is the combination of different elements including words in a sentence within a given speech, time, place or circumstances In summary, without context, it will be harder for readers to uncover the meanings of a new word in a reading text

2.2.4.2 THE ROLE OF CONTEXT IN L2 VOCABULARY ACQUISITION

By the advent of new pedagogical approaches, different teaching methods focusing on the use of context have been employed to help learners build up their knowledge of vocabulary through reading activities Many researchers suggest that most L2 vocabulary learning often comes from explicit vocabulary learning (Laufer,

1991, 2001; Laufer & Paribakht, 1998; Webb, 2008) However, it is also claimed that teaching separate words with explanation is less effective than inferring their meaning

in the context (Thornbury, 2002; Au, 1993, as cited in Teng, 2015) Providing learners with the meanings of new words through “vocabulary lists” or “word-translation pairs”

or even encouraging the dictionary use seems inappropriate for vocabulary acquisition (Zaid, 2009, p.64) This action may prevent learners from applying inference strategies in context Also, it is said that word lists accompanied with translated meanings or equivalents make learners become less autonomous in language learning and may sometimes cause them confusion in figuring out the right meaning (McCarthy, 1990; Prince, 1996)

As pointed out earlier, vocabulary is acquired when learners try to figure out the meaning from their context of use (Paribakht & Wesche, 1999) For example, Dole, Sloan and Trathen (1995) carry out a study about teaching vocabulary by instructing students how to learn the contextual meanings of words Although there

is a disagreement about the percentage of vocabulary learned from direct instruction

or context, it is definitely sure that there are a great number of new words acquired from context (Leung, 1992; Sternberg, 1987, as cited in Wagner & Meros, 2014) Moreover, for children’s vocabulary learning achievement, it is said that more effective contexts are provided by reading text than oral conversation (Nagy & Anderson, 1984) Bloom (2000) also shares the same opinion on the idea that contextual clues support vocabulary learning among young children

Nation (2001, p.232) maintains that “incidental learning via guessing from context is the most important of all sources of vocabulary learning” Incidental vocabulary learning has been believed to be incorporated into L2 vocabulary learning (Schmitt, 2000; Waring & Takaki, 2003; Hunt & Beglar, 2005) Ahmad (2011)

investigates the effectiveness of Saudi EFL learners’ performance levels between intentional and incidental vocabulary learning by retaining and using new words The findings demonstrated that the incidental type showed better results than intentional type

Extensive reading, in which learners are exposed to “large quantities of material” (Grabe & Stoller, 2002, p.259), has been highly appreciated in giving learners more input-rich environments for incidental vocabulary learning (Day and Bamford, 1998; Horst, 2005; Webb, 2008) In a study by Pigada and Schmitt (2006) conducted on a French learner, extensive reading supports acquiring aspects of vocabulary knowledge Nation (2001) also declares that “the use of reading and other input sources may be the only practical options for out of class language development for some learners” (p 155) For example, a large variety of contexts in reading can

be used such as a passage with edited versions, a novel, a constructed paragraph, a graded reader or a short text

Clearly, it is good for learners to meet words in their context of use (Thornbury, 2002) and increase the amount of vocabulary (Coady, 1997) To sum up, the context plays an essential role in vocabulary acquisition through various types of reading practices In addition, in order to get successful guessing, it is absolute that readers need to know about context clues and types of context clues, which are regarded as signs for guessing These issues are described in the following parts for more information

2.2.4.3 CONTEXT CLUES

2.2.4.3.1 DEFINITION

Undoubtedly, context may provide numerous indicators called contextual clues or context cues to make guessing become easier “Contextual clues is a technique of inferring meaning of unfamiliar words or simply look at the relationship between the 5 unfamiliar words with the words, clauses, sentences, or paragraphs” (Nation, 1990, p.31) To clarify, contextual clues are hints found within a sentence,

paragraph, or text that a reader can employ to understand the meanings of unknown words, which makes reading the text more comprehensible Carton (1971) mentions three terms including intra-lingual, inter-lingual and extra-lingual The knowledge of the target language is declared intra-lingual cues; whereas the inter-lingual means cues available in the text Also, the knowledge of the reader about the world is called extra-lingual According to Haastrup (1991), guessing the meaning of the word is done thanks to the linguistic clues and learners’ knowledge As can be seen, linguistic clues may come from the word itself, the surrounding words or even the concerning sentences in the text As Aitchinson (2003) states, “word meaning is probably learned

by noticing the words which come alongside” (p 91)

Likewise, Kaivanpanah and Alavi (2008) mentions the terms “reader-related variables” and “text-related variables” in their study “Reader-related variables” consists of knowledge of vocabulary and grammar as well as characteristics of the reader whereas text and word characteristics belong to “text-related variables” Additionally, contextual clues may be linguistic or situational context (Rhalmi, 2013) Linguistic context is considered as the linguistic environment where a word is used and situational context includes extra linguistic elements like background knowledge Similarly, local or global contextual clues are other terms While local clues are enclosed with “the target word” in the sentence, global clues are in the whole text

To conclude, in spite of any terms for expressing contextual clues, they are considered essential components for successful guessing of L2 learners Laufer and Bensoussan (1982) confirm that guessing should be taught by focusing on the context clues which enhance its effectiveness

2.2.4.3.2 THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT CLUES

Guessing meaning in context is not always easy for learners Laufer (1997) lists four main reasons which make guessing become challenging to L2 readers First

of all, it may come from nonexistence of clues Undeniably, without sufficient clues, guessing will be impossible This means that readers cannot ask for any help from

words or sentences surrounding a new word in order to discover the meaning Second, although there is the appearance of clues, readers still cannot use them With their limited vocabulary knowledge, they find more unknown words in clues, which prevents them from guessing the meaning correctly Sometimes, some similarities to the unknown words may also lead to poor guessing (Bensoussan & Laufer, 1984) Laufer and Sim (1985) indicate that guessing from context should be used when learners have a large amount of vocabulary to support their guessing That is why equipping themselves with a large number of words helps readers guess word meaning successfully Third, partial and misleading clues may contribute to the difficulty of guessing These clues may be not enough for guessing or sometimes make readers give wrong inferences of the unknown word The high language ability

to recognize useful information from context is essential The last reason is suppressed clues As mentioned earlier, with richer background knowledge, readers can infer the meaning of word correctly

From the above reasons, it can be emphasized that the amount and quality of contextual clues may decide how successful guessing is (Çetinavcı, 2013) Çetinavcı (2013) carries out a study to investigate whether Turkish EFL university students used guessing or not The researcher administered a vocabulary test to the participants and the findings showed that rich context helped students guess more successfully than poor context The term “rich context” is considered as sufficient clues which assist learners to infer the meaning of unknown words easily and correctly (Mondria

& Wit-de-Boer, 1991) Furthermore, in the findings of Rott (1999), rich context clues

in reading are found to increase the exposure to L2 incidental learning Webb (2008) investigates the effect of context on incidental vocabulary acquisition; the results indicates that it is the quality of context rather than the frequency of dealing with new words that affected vocabulary gaining That is why the role of EFL instructors are very important to give clear and sufficient clues for learners to enhance guessing ability in reading comprehension

2.2.4.3.3 TYPES OF CONTEXT CLUES

There are different classifications of context clues that readers may use to attempt to infer the meaning of unknown words Among the important works, the suggestion from Sternberg and Powell (1983) is chosen with two kinds of context including external and internal context External context refers to the kind of semantic information whereas internal context refers to the morphological structure of the word

To be more particular, Sternberg and Powell (1983, p 54-55), Nuttall (1982, p 68) summarize the different types of context clues which are available in a text (READING – Context Clues rev August 2005, from http://www.mdc.edu)

By dividing the words into roots

and affixes (prefixes or suffixes),

readers can guess the meaning of

new terms

Babies are born healthier when their

mothers have good prenatal care

 “Prenatal” = prefix (pre =

before) + the stem (natal = birth)

The term may be defined within

the sentence or the following

sentence It can be a statement with

the exact meaning of a word or an

exact description of the nature,

scope or maning of something

Clues include “that is”, commas,

dashes and parentheses

 His emaciation, that is, his

skeleton-like appearance, was frightening to see

 “Skeleton-like appearance”

= “Emaciation”

 Fluoroscopy, examination

with a fluoroscope, has

become a common practice

Examples, additional explanations

or summaries found nearby may

help a reader explain the meaning

of a new word Clues include

“including, such as, and for

example”

Piscatorial creatures, such as

flounder, salmon, and trout, live in

the coldest parts of the ocean

 “Piscatorical” refers to “Fish”

The meaning is discovered through

the repetition of an idea expressed

in a similar way

The mountain pass was a tortuous

road, winding and twisting like a

snake around the trees the mountainside

and twisting.”

Contrast/

An opposite meaning clue

contrasts the meaning of an

unfamiliar word with the meaning

of a familiar term Clues including

“although”, “however”, “but”…

When the light brightens, the pupils

of the eyes contract; however, when

it grows darker, they dilate

 “Dilate” contrasts with

“contract”

The words are described again in a

different way by using other

words, phrases, or sentences Clues

include “that means, that is to say,

in other words, or”

The surface of Africa consists

mainly of plateaus or large flat areas

although these occur at different levels

 “plateaus” = “large flat areas”

Readers can use punctuation clues

to infer the meaning of unknown

words such as quotation marks

(showing that the word has a

special meaning), dashes

(opposition), parentheses or

brackets (enclosing a definition),

and italics (showing that the word

will be defined), commas,

semicolons, or colons

The use of computers to handle text,

or word processing, was foreseen in the 1950’s

“handle” = “word processing”

(Clue: comma)

e The meaning of an unknown word

is figured out by the cause-effect

relationship with other words

Clues include “as a result,

accordingly, because, since,

hence…”

Since noone came to the first

meeting, attendance for the second one is mandatory for all staff

 “mandatory” = required

Mood/ To

The meaning of unknown word

must harmonize with the mood

The lugubrious wails of the gypsies

matched the dreary whistling of the wind in the all but-deserted cemetery

“sorrowful”(Mood set by words:

wails, dreary, deserted cemetery)

In summary, after presenting the necessity of context in guessing new words

as well as a variety of context clues, it is high time the strategy of guessing showed its significance; what is more, how this strategy should be taught is also given in details in order that this method can be followed in every reading lesson

2.2.5 THE STRATEGY OF GUESSING FROM CONTEXT

2.2.5.1 GUESSING – A PREFERABLE STRATEGY

It cannot be denied that unknown words are considered a major problem which prevents L2 learners from grasping the meaning of the reading text In EFL classes, teachers often instruct students to look up a new word in a dictionary when reading

to get the meaning; however, most of them are often lazy to hunt for a dictionary That is the reason why inferring the meaning from context is advocated as an alternative strategy, which is reported to be one of the most important sub-skills for L2 reading (Parreren & Van Parreren, 1981) It is also suggested that contextual guessing may be the better solution for learners to cope with unknown words while reading (Dubin, 1993; Wesche & Paribakht, 2010) As confirmed in the previous section, guessing word meaning in context has been seen as one of the most common strategies for vocabulary learning (Rott, 1999; Paribakht & Wesche, 1999)

In a study of Kanatlar (1995), it is indicated that the most popular strategy was the guessing of word meanings by means of context clues; the total use is higher than other techniques such as translation, parts of speech and word analysis Paribakht and

Wesche (1999) investigate the strategies that 10 intermediate Canadian university students used when encountering new vocabulary items in the text They are asked to list which words they remember and describe how they learn these words Then, based on the data analysis, it is reported that the main strategy used is inferencing What is more, both acquired knowledge and contextual clues contribute to drawing out the meaning of new words Furthermore, in a study conducted by Nassaji (2003), twenty-one ESL intermediate students from different L1 follow a 12-week study program on reading comprehension The findings shows that students use guessing strategies from context more frequently than other techniques although students’ linguistic knowledge and available cues in text somehow affect the results

To sum up, the contextual guessing is pointed out to be a common strategy for inferring the meaning of unknown words when readers do not have sufficient knowledge in vocabulary, grammar, or linguistic elements to comprehend the text

2.2.5.2 HOW GUESSING CAN BE TAUGHT

Based on the types of contextual clues for word guessing mentioned above, the necessity of word guessing instruction should be highlighted Several researchers confirm that teaching learners with word guessing strategies from context will help

to facilitate reading comprehension (Huckin & Bloch, 1993; Schulz, 1993; Bengeleil

& Paribakth, 2004, as cited in SELÇUK, 2006) There are many procedures that guessing meaning from context can be taught in classrooms Thornbury (2002, p 148) recommended the following steps for guessing from context:

 Decide the part of speech of the unknown word

 Look for further clues in the word’s immediate collocates

 Look at the wider context, including the surrounding clauses and sentences

 Look at the form of the word for any clues as to meaning

 Make a guess to the meaning of the word

 Read on and see if the guess is confirmed

Similarly, a five-step strategy for guessing words in context was suggested by Clarke and Nation (1980, p 250-256):

 Finding the part of speech of the unknown word Is it a Noun, Adjective, Adverb,

Verb or Preposition?

 Looking at the immediate context of the unknown word and making this context

simpler if necessary

 Looking at the wider context of the unknown word by paying attention to the

clause containing the unknown word and surrounding clauses

 Guessing the meaning of the unknown word

 Checking whether the guess is correct or not

Along with those above steps, Clarke and Nation suggested a clear and practical teaching procedure for guessing from the context:

 Writing the steps on the board

 Choosing a particular word in the text for practicing guessing

 Asking students to work in pairs or groups; asking four students to focus on one step for each

 Repeating more than once until students are ready for guessing by their own

To sum up, it can be seen that many teaching steps of guessing were introduced

to instruct students how to guess the new words appropriately and effectively Yet, it depends on the specific teaching situations that the teachers or the instructors build their own steps of teaching guessing to be suitable for their own students In summary, guessing word meaning from context is a critical reading strategy which should be instructed to L2 readers Thanks to employing context in reading texts, good readers will know more words, learn more words and of course understand more (Stanovich,

1986, as cited in Coady, 1993)

After presenting key terms of contextual guessing and explaining them in details, the researcher begins to give an overview of the related previous studies in

order to confirm the effectiveness of guessing strategy on reading comprehension From that, the research gaps can be found

2.3 RELATED PREVIOUS STUDIES

2.3.1 OVERVIEW

There is a suggestion that the success of vocabulary learning should result from the combination of both the direct vocabulary presentation and the indirect teaching with inferencing strategies However, the use of contextual clues for word guessing has been proved to be more effective There have been a lot of research investigating how the guessability of word meaning in context contributes to the vocabulary acquisition as well as the reading comprehension

To begin with, studies were conducted by different methods in order to ensure reliability and validity of the results Firstly, the experimental research design was applied to investigate the effects of two above approaches of vocabulary learning In Zaid’s study (2009), the findings from pre-test and post-test indicated that both direct teaching individual words and teaching students how to figure out word meaning from sentence context were useful in students’ acquiring, retaining and recalling lexical items Mahmoud (2016) also conducted his study by using the same method

in which the CG was taught with certain new words, then these words were replaced

by nonsense words and the EG was asked to guess the meaning from context The findings showed better results from the EG

Secondly, qualitative procedures were also added or used such as the questionnaire, think-aloud protocols, the interview or the observation For instance, data may be collected by think-aloud protocols which is an effective method for investigating learning strategies by many researchers The researchers may understand what the participant actually thinks right the time of mental process (O’Malley & Chamot, 1990) Also, think-aloud techniques help students in justifying their guesses (Ali, et al., 2012) Hamada (2009) took an advantage of this technique

in his study, five Japanese college-level ESL learners used this technique to infer the

meaning of unknown words which were underlined in a passage by learners before Beside using an experimental method, Rokni & Niknaqsh (2013) added the individual background questionnaire to their study in order that the researchers knew more about the participants’ English knowledge, age, gender or L1 With more personal information, it may help the researchers have a deeper understanding of the subjects The participants were then administered the proficiency test to check their homogeneity and the reliability of the test was afterwards reported to be 0.89 In a study of Khanfar (2017), a questionnaire was used to find out the correlation between context clues and vocabulary learning In this study, a questionnaire including 20 items with closed and ended questions was delivered to teachers to confirm the effectiveness of guessing strategy on students’ vocabulary acquisition With the use

of a questionnaire, it is suitable in terms of time so that participants can easily answer the questions and give their conceptions

Moreover, the impact of context clues on improving students’ understanding

of new words during reading was investigated by Yuen (2009) Not only were there the findings from the experimental design but also the results of classroom observation indicated that students gradually paid much attention to contextual clues strategies to support their reading In another study by Kanatlar & Peker (2009), think-aloud protocols (TAPs) and retrospective sessions (RSs) were used to explore the importance of guessing words-in-context strategies In the TAPs, the participants including 6 beginners and 6 upper-intermediate students were asked to think aloud when guessing; then, in the RPs, they reported how they guessed Following on from

an earlier study of Fraser (1999), by using retrospective think-aloud interview, the participants had a tendency of using 65% of the time for guessing word meaning Those studies also came to the same conclusion that the use of guessing in context was effective in improving student’s vocabulary and reading comprehension

Many studies revealed that the proficiency level of learners should also be taken into account Different types of contextual clues were also used by language learners for guessing across different proficiency levels, according to Soria (2001)

Some research mentioned that the learners at high level showed better results towards reading comprehension through contextual clues In addition, advanced language learners often demonstrate more guessing strategies than intermediate learners thanks

to their sufficient vocabulary knowledge Gu (2003) mentioned that guessing was not appropriate for beginners due to their lack of vocabulary In a study carried out by Huckin (1986), it was discovered that lower intermediate students had difficulty inferring the meanings of unknown words owing to their knowledge of features of the context Therefore, advanced learners were chosen in the next study by Huckin & Jin (1987) and showed their ability in guessing The “t” test analysis showed that the

EG receiving fifteen-minute training sessions outperformed the CG Also, this demonstrated that training students helped them implement guessing properly In her study, Soria (2001) also reported that learners were able to apply contextual clues in guessing and the high-level learners were more successful From his research on five Japanese college learners, Hamada (2009) reached a consensus that the contextual analysis was frequently used by advanced L2 learners in reading practices In the findings from a study by Kaivanpanah and Alavi (2008), the upper intermediate learners got successful in inferencing strategies or they were able to make extensive use of L2 contextual clues Chung (2008) showed the same results when he made a quasi-experimental study on 30 upper intermediate students in Hong Kong secondary schools The findings showed that all participants used all the contextual clues’ types including immediate and wider context as well Significantly, the mean scores of the pre-test and post-test indicated the greater progress that the EG made Morrison’s study (1996) was also in favor of high-proficiency learners due to the same reason of low-proficiency readers’ limited lexical knowledge Furthermore, according to Aebersold and Field (1997), although lower level students may have the schemata, they do not have enough linguistic skills for guessing They state that the use of contextual guessing is not much useful even though students are given pre-reading discussions

Besides, some other researchers conducted their studies on low proficiency learners to see whether those learners could achieve any good results Cheung (2007) attempted to show better performance from low secondary students in guessing meaning from context in his experimental study Ngan-ha (2007) made a survey on

60 low secondary students to see how they used guessing strategies for pertaining vocabulary In this study, the author divided students into three groups in terms of level, consisting of highest, middle and lowest After the pre-test and post-test comparison, all groups showed the difference even though the lowest group was reported not to use the guessing strategies

Furthermore, Kanatlar and Peker (2009) suggested that guessing context might be taught or practiced without considering the students’ proficiency level In their study, contextual clues were frequently used by both beginner and upper-intermediate level EFL students although the beginners were found using guessing strategies more often than the other Additionally, the results indicated that

word-in-it was the clues that affected the use of guessing strategies rather than the proficiency level of students Bensoussan and Laufer (1984) also conducted a study on 60 freshmen at different levels including 20 good, 20 average and 20 weak students to see whether the proficient students could use context more effectively or not Data analysis indicated that the proportion in using context of good students was not too much in comparison with others; moreover, the use of guessing strategies among all students was not considerably different In other words, this study aims at the idea that “student level does not appear to have a significant effect on lexical guessing in context” (Bensoussan & Laufer, 1984, p 25)

The ability of high and low proficiency learners in inferring meaning from context may also depend on types of selected reading materials Kaivanpanah and Alavi (2008) said that the students from upper intermediate level did well in inferencing both simple and difficult texts, compared to lower intermediate ones In

a study by Nassaji (2003) mentioned in the previous section, the researcher used short texts instead of long texts in his study This indicated that long texts may give

different results because guessing depended on the contexts Additionally, the use of cloze exercises or context enrichment exercises was advocated in teaching students how to guess successfully Honeyfield (1977) conducted a case study on ninth-grade students with context enrichment exercises; after the training, they made a progress

in guessing Walters (2006) had the same opinion on the effectiveness of this type of exercise in evoking students’ mind of using contextual clues In his study, the ESL students were trained with the practice of cloze exercises Using short stories for learning vocabulary among high school intermediate Iranian learners through the use

of context technique, Ebrahimi, et al (2015) showed the effects of this technique on learners’ vocabulary building; in other words, this technique helped learners keep L2 words in their minds longer

It is said that guessing from contexts constructed for specific purpose is different from guessing from natural contexts (Alsaawi, 2013) In a study of Sadeghi and Samadi (2013), four texts used in the experiment were taken from four chapters

of the textbook “Select Readings” for students with low reading skills It is also an interesting idea when researchers decide to use authentic texts rather than adapted versions Especially, the choice for reading materials also came from reliable sources For example, the textbook “Select Readings” (Lee & Gundersen, 2002) is recommended for non-TEFL student taking the General English course (Rokni & Niknaqsh, 2013) Shokouhi and Askari (2010) examined the effectiveness of a contextual guessing strategy (CGS) on vocabulary and authentic reading texts at the pre-university level One-hundred and twenty male and female students were equally selected to participate in this research with two EGs, called context and no-context groups The context group was given a CGS instruction and training on inferring the meaning of low-frequency words in natural texts while the other was taught by the traditional method of teaching direct vocabulary However, reading texts may sometimes be adapted to meet with relatively equal difficulty because the difficulty

of the text may affect learners’ guessability (Paribakht & Wesche, 2000)

In conclusion, with any methods, students’ levels or even selected materials taken into consideration, most of the findings confirm the idea that the word- meaning guessing in context is very helpful in improving vocabulary learning and reading comprehension

2.3.2 RESEARCH GAPS

As can be seen, there are some noticeable points drawn out in the literature:

To begin with, almost all of the studies on the effects of word-meaning guessing in context have been conducted in college, university, junior high school or even elementary settings with both non-Vietnamese and Vietnamese participants However, there are just a few studies paying attention to senior high school students

in Vietnam, especially in Duong Van Duong high school Consequently, the first research question was figured out

Another point is that high school learners’ attitudes towards the effectiveness

of word-guessing strategies have not been much explored In a study from Pham (2011), eleventh-grade students’ attitudes from Phuc Thanh high school in Hai Duong province was investigated The majority of them showed the positive attitude towards the use of contextual guessing in improving students’ reading comprehension With the same results, Pham (2015) carried out a study on students of Lao Cai Community College The results brought positive changes in students’ reading skill and they also felt more motivated when doing reading tasks

We can see that it is necessary to understand the students’ learning attitudes

so that the appropriate method may be applied It is claimed that the success of any methodology depends on the perceptions of EFL learners towards that methodology (Ebrahimi, et al., 2015) From that, materials and tasks need be tailored to meet with their needs Therefore, students’ performance will be improved and they will be much motivated in learning the English subject itself Yuen (2009) states that students’ attitudes towards learning from context may be influenced by their attitudes towards learning English Clearly, students’ abilities may result from their positive learning

attitudes (Ali, et al., 2012) From these mentioned reasons, the second research question was formed

In sum, the related studies helped the researcher build up the thesis “The

effectiveness of word-meaning guessing in context on reading comprehension among eleventh-grade students of Duong Van Duong high school” This current study aims

to bridge the gap of the existing studies

The following table summarizes the previous related studies presented in details above:

Khanfar (2017) Yuen (2009) Kanatlar & Peker (2009)

FINDINGS

Students make a progress

in guessing in context

STUDENTS’ LEVEL Huckin (1986)

Huckin & Jin (1987)

Gu (2003) Soria (2001) Hamada (2009) Kaivanpanah & Alavi (2008)

Chung (2008)

- Advanced students guess properly and effectively after being trained

- Guessing is not successful for low-proficiency

students

Morrison (1996) Aebersold & Field (1997)

Cheung (2007) Ngan-ha (2007) Kanatlar & Peker (2009) Bensoussan & Laufer (1984)

- Different levels do not appear to have significant effect on guessing in context

Shokouhi & Askari (2010)

Students do well in guessing in context with:

- Simple/ Difficult texts

- Short/ Long texts

- Cloze exercises/ context enrichment exercises

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

3.1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter reports the design of the study First, the research site and the participants are described; next, research approach, materials, teaching procedures, measurement instruments and analytical framework are presented and finally, the chapter discusses the reliability and validity of the research

3.2 RESEARCH SITE

The study was conducted in Duong Van Duong High School, located in Nha

Be district in Ho Chi Minh City Founded in 2014, this school is announced the third biggest school in Ho Chi Minh City In the school year of 2017 and 2018, the school contained around one thousand students at three grades, including grade 10, 11 and

12 Most of students here are at low level due to the current situation of learning English in rural areas; hence, the scores for entering the school was quite low, compared to other schools in urban areas Together with other subjects, English is a compulsory subject, following the National English Program of Vietnamese Educational System; thus, the English textbooks are used nationwide Because of this subject’s significance, it makes up four main periods in the morning and two tutoring periods in the afternoon per week In addition, the weak students are asked to attend special classes, two periods per week, if their scores are under the requirement These classes are often open after the final exams The students have to deal with a number

of tests during each semester; the average scores are required to be over 3.5 at the end

of the school year if students want to move to the next grade

3.3 PARTICIPANTS

The participants of the research were students in two classes in eleventh grade: 11A2 and 11A4 with 35 students in each class The number of male and female students are nearly the same The English average scores of these students were

around 5.0, with the limitation in good students just constituting about 5 percent Most

of the students are poor at English with little interest in learning English; some of them learn English just because of its mandatory requirement Additionally, although the teaching practices only focus on vocabulary, reading and grammar structures, students are quite scared of reading passages The lack of vocabulary makes the long reading texts become so complicated that students often ignore them in the tests That

is why it is quite hard for teachers to teach them reading skill effectively

There were many classes at Duong Van Duong high school, but the researcher was appointed to be in charge of two classes of eleventh grade at random and decided

to select them as a representative sample Right from the beginning of the new school year, the classes are assigned to the researcher by the person who is in charge of arranging the teaching schedule for the teaching staff Hence, the researcher has no priority to choose the class she wants to teach

The researcher based her sample selection on understanding that the students

in two classes shares many characteristics with other eleventh graders of the school

As all the participants were are Vietnamese with the same age, they were thought to share social and cultural background In addition, the participants are claimed at pre-intermediate level after being carefully discussed with other English teachers of the school As pointed out above, due to coming from a rural area, their English competence does not reach the expected level for eleventh grade

The table below shows the participants of the study:

Table 3.1

Descriptions of the participants

Number Percentage Number Percentage