Effectiveness of guessing meaning from context in improving students word attack skills at university of labor and social affairs

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies ĐÀM LAN HƯƠNG EFFECTIVENESS OF GUESSING MEANING FROM CONTEXT IN I

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies

ĐÀM LAN HƯƠNG

EFFECTIVENESS OF GUESSING MEANING FROM CONTEXT IN IMPROVING STUDENTS’ WORD-ATTACK SKILLS AT UNIVERSTITY OF LABOR AND SOCIAL

AFFAIRS

(Hiệu quả của việc đoán từ theo ngữ cảnh nhằm nâng cao kỹ năng xử

lý từ mới của sinh viên trường Đại học Lao động Xã hội)

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology

Code: 601410

HANOI - 2009

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies

ĐÀM LAN HƯƠNG

EFFECTIVENESS OF GUESSING MEANING FROM CONTEXT IN IMPROVING STUDENTS’ WORD-ATTACK SKILLS AT UNIVERSTITY OF LABOR AND SOCIAL

AFFAIRS

(Hiệu quả của việc đoán từ theo ngữ cảnh nhằm nâng cao kỹ năng xử

lý từ mới của sinh viên trường Đại học Lao động Xã hội)

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology

Code: 601410 Supervisor: Nguyễn Huyền Minh, M.A

HANOI - 2009

1.1 Background to the study

1.2 Statement of the problem

1.3 Purposes of the study

1.4 Scope of the study

1.5 Method of the study

1.6 Design of the study

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 What is reading?

2.1.1 Definition of reading 2.1.2 Types of reading

2.2 Learning strategies

2.3 Reading strategies

2.3.1 Definition of reading strategies 2.3.2 Classification of reading strategies 2.3.3 Effect of reading strategies on reading comprehension

2.4 The strategy of guessing meaning from context

2.4.1 What is context?

2.4.2 What is guessing from context?

2.4.3 Factors affecting students’ success in guessing meaning from context 2.4.4 Approaches to teaching of guessing strategy

2.4.5 Review of related studies

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS

3.1 The setting of the study

3.2 Subjects

3.3 Instruments

3.3.1 Questionnaires 3.3.2 Pre-test and post-test 3.3.3 Interviews

4.2 Discussion

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

APPENDICES

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

1 EFL: English as a Foreign Language

2 ESL: English as a Second Language

3 ESP: English for Specific Purpose

4 L1: First Language

5 ULSA: University of Labor and Social Affairs

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Results of pre-test and post-test

Table 2: Students’ attitudes towards reading comprehension and the strategy of guessing meaning from context

Table 3: Students’ opinions on the effectiveness of the programme

Table 4: Overall students’ guessing strategies for two passages

Table 5: Low level group’s guessing strategies

Table 6: Intermediate level group’s guessing strategies

Table 7: High level group’s guessing strategies

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

This chapter provides an overview on the background of the study, the statement of problem, a brief of the purpose of study, methodology of the study, followed by an overview of forthcoming chapters

1.1 Background to the study

Since 1986 when the Vietnamese government implemented open door policy, English has gained more significance and been considered as an important tool for Vietnam‟s integration into global world Thus, the government has paid more and more attention to the teaching and learning of English at schools, colleges and universities English has rapidly become the most popular second language among Vietnamese people It is a tool for getting access to information from different sources including scientific and literary books and journals as well

as the internet websites in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context, which helps to bring them opportunities to enrich their knowledge in particular and to improve their future prospect in general

Reading is a process which contributes to success in learning a foreign language and good language learners are considered to be good readers In order to become good or successful readers, students need to be equipped with the skills to comprehend the reading texts Reading strategies are said to facilitate successful second language learning and be effective tools for students to develop their reading skills To help students master these reading strategies, instruction on reading strategies is said to be essential However, empirical research indicates that in most reading classrooms students have received inadequate instruction on reading skills and strategies There is a lack of connection between instruction and reading activity The teacher‟s emphasis is often put on the production of comprehension rather than the processing skills This reality called for the integration of reading strategies into reading instruction to help students become more strategic readers

Of all the reading strategies commonly recognized today in second language reading, guessing from context seems to be one of the most valuable but difficult strategies for second language students to master It was found out that they were often reluctant to engage in the guessing process as they preferred first language (L1) translations Furthermore, students do not have sufficient skills to derive the meaning of unknown words or phrases that they meet during reading comprehension process Their guessing skills are often poor, especially where context clues are not in the immediate textual environment Therefore, guessing strategies for unknown words has been strongly emphasized

1.2 Statement of the problem

Reading comprehension is essential to academic learning areas, to professional success and to lifelong learning University students can not achieve success in reading comprehension without mastering reading strategies in general and the strategy of guessing from context in dealing with reading texts in particular

At University of Labor and Social Affairs (ULSA), English for Specific Purpose (ESP) syllabus mainly focuses on reading skill Yet many students have not succeeded in their reading texts, which contain lots of professional words This is partly due to the fact that they lack the skills to cope with unknown words, or in other words, they are not equipped with the strategy of guessing from context

This fact raises the question on the necessity as well as the effectiveness of instruction on the strategy of guessing meaning from context for improving reading skills for students at ULSA

1.3 Purposes of the study

Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of instruction programme on the strategy of guessing from context for improving students‟ word-attack skill and reading comprehension in teaching reading for second-year ESP students at University of Social and Labor Affairs In addition, since this study was conducted in a university general

English reading class where students' reading proficiency was mixed, the second objective of this study was to find out how students with different reading proficiency are influenced by the instruction programme

The following specific research questions were addressed:

1) Does instruction on the strategy of guessing from context enhance second language students‟ word-attack skill in particular and reading ability in general?

2) How to empower students to become more self-directed and effective in their learning

of guessing strategy?

1.4 Scope of the study

The study is focused only on the second-year students at ULSA who begin to have ESP lessons The subjects of the study were chosen at random and various among 68 second-year students of ULSA Yet, the study results cannot be true to all Vietnamese students Thus, my recommendations for teaching and learning the strategy of guessing from context might work well only for ULSA teachers and students, and for the ones who are teaching and learning at such universities with similar English syllabus or education training or for the ones who concern

1.5 Methodology of the study

This study employs both qualitative and quantitative methods An explicit instruction programme on the strategy of guessing from context was conducted in addition to regular English curriculum Data from questionnaires were collected to study the students‟ changes in attitudes towards the strategy of guessing from context A pre-test and post-test were done to study the actual performance of students in the use of the strategy before and after the programme Observations and interviews with students were also used to get more valid and reliable results

1.6 Design of the study

The research consists of four main chapters: Introduction, Literature Review, the Study and Conclusion

Chapter 1, Introduction, presents the background and statement of the problem, the purpose, and the design as well as the scope of the study

Chapter 2, Literature Review, discusses issues of reading, reading processes, major approaches to teaching reading, reading strategies in general and the strategy of guessing meaning from context in particular

Chapter 3, Research Design and Methods, explains the methodology used in the study including the population information, instrumentation, and data collection and data analysis, Chapter 4, Findings and Discussion, reports the findings as well the discussion of the results Chapter 5, Conclusion, offers a summary of the findings and further implication for using the strategy of guessing from context in teaching reading skills

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter provides an overview of the topic, review of related studies The three main features will be presented are: theoretical background of reading, reading strategies, and the strategy of guessing meaning from context

Nowadays, even though there have been a variety of definitions of reading, they all share a common view that reading is an interactive process between a reader and a text which leads to automaticity or reading fluency Reading is also seen as a creative process in which “the reader interprets a message in the light of his previous knowledge, predicts and anticipates subsequent rhetorical strategy and information, selects information relevant to his reading purpose, matches information with his previous knowledge and experience, evaluates it in the light of that knowledge and then applies this information to new experience” (Goodman, 1967, p.259)

In this process, the reader interacts dynamically with the text as he/she tries to elicit the meaning and where various kinds of knowledge are being used: linguistic or systematic knowledge (through bottom-up) process as well as schematic knowledge (through top-down processing) (Alyoussef, 2005) And Carrel and Eisterhold add that in this interactive process, both bottom-up and top-down processing occur simultaneously at all levels Bottom-up

process ensures that the listeners/readers will be sensitive to information that is novel or that does not fit their ongoing hypotheses about the content or structure of the text; top-down process helps the listeners/readers to resolve ambiguities or to select between alternative possible interpretations of the incoming data (Carrel and Eisterhold, 1983, p.557)

The advantage of intensive reading is that it focuses the student on certain aspects of the language However, intensive reading is usually done with difficult texts with many unknown words that require the student to use a dictionary This means the reading is slow and that there are few opportunities for the student to learn to read smoothly, because she has to stop every few seconds to work on something she can't understand This slows or prevents the development of fluent eye movements that are so necessary to improve one's reading skill Intensive reading is the most typically taught method of teaching reading Unfortunately some teachers only know this method and believe that by teaching the vocabulary and grammar that

is all the student needs This is not so, she also needs practice in reading and to be trained in developing reading skills

Extensive reading

Another type of reading is “extensive reading” There have been conflicts about the definition

of the term “extensive reading” Some refer it to “skimming and scanning activities”, while others associate it to quantity material Susser and Robb (1990) define “extensive reading” as

a language teaching/learning procedure that it is reading (a) of a large quantity of material or long texts; (b) for global or general understanding; (c) with the intention of obtaining pleasure from the text Donnes also shares the same idea about definition of “extensive reading” as Susser and Robb, stating that it is an approach in which readers self-select materials from a collection of graded readers (books which have reduced vocabulary range and simplified grammatical structures)

Extensive reading has several aims, which include encouraging second language readers to read for pleasure and information both inside and outside the classroom, to read for meaning, and to encourage in sustained silent reading He also points out benefits of extensive reading Extensive reading improves second language readers‟ comprehension, promotes their vocabulary knowledge development, and enhances their writing skills and oral proficiency Extensive reading is also effective in facilitating growth of readers‟ positive attitudes toward reading and increasing their motivation to read With specific reference to reading fluency development, extensive reading has shown to be effective in increasing reading speed and comprehension (Bell, 2001)

Hedge also pointed out lots of advantages of extensive reading It not only helps to develop reading ability and but also enables students to achieve their independency by reading either in class or at home, through sustained silent reading in the way that “Students can build their language competence, progress in their reading ability Become more independent in their

studies, acquire cultural knowledge, and develop confidence and motivation to carry on their learning (Hedge, 2003, p.204-205)

It can be seen that both approaches have important roles to play in helping students gain fluency, first in the critical area of vocabulary and word recognition, and then in developing better reading comprehension skills Thus, it is suggested that a well-balanced second language reading program should include three main foci: vocabulary development activities, intensive classroom reading and extensive out-of-class free-reading activities

2.2 Learning Strategies

As Wenden (1987) states the term “learner/learning strategies” refers to language learning behaviors learners actually engage in to learn and regulate the learning of a second language For Oxford (1990), learning strategies are important for language learning and they are specific actions taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and more transferable to new situations According to Ahmed (1989; cited in Lawson and Hogben, 1996, p.106), good learners not only use more strategies, but they also rely more heavily on different strategies than the poor learners

Learning strategies are classified as metacognitive, cognitive or socio-affective strategies Metacognitive strategies involve thinking about the learning process, planning for learning, monitoring of learning and self-evaluation of learning; cognitive strategies involve manipulation or transformation of the material to be learned, i.e the learner interacts directly with what is to be learned; and socio-affective strategies deal with social-mediating activity and transacting with others (Brown, 1994) Oxford (1990) has divided learning strategies into two general classes: direct (memory, cognitive and compensation, etc.) and indirect (metacognitive, affective and social) She claims that these two strategies are closely connected and support each other

O‟Malley (1987) points out that good language learners use a variety of strategies in their learning of a second language and that less competent learners might improve their skills in a

second language through training on strategies Thus, they can apply strategies to the acquisition of different language skills, and explicit strategy training should be applied to them

2.3 Reading strategies

Over the past three decades the importance of the strategies ESL students use while reading has been recognized Nowadays, most researches on reading focus on the effective reading strategies that increase students‟ comprehension The common results showed that there is a positive relationship between strategies and reading comprehension Success in reading mainly depends on appropriate strategy used and unsuccessful students can improve their reading by being trained to use effective strategies (Danseeau, 1985) Carrell (1983) also stated that reading strategies can be taught to students, and when taught strategies help improve student performance

2.3.1 Definition of reading strategies

So, the question is “What are reading strategies?” There is a lack of consensus about the definition of the term “reading strategies” According to Block, reading strategies indicate how readers conceive a task, what textual cues they attend to, how they make sense of what they read, and what they do when they do not understand (Block, 1986) Also, they suggest how readers view interaction with written text and how strategies are related to text comprehension Garner (1987) defined reading strategies as an action or series of actions employed to construct meaning Barnett (1989) used the term “reading strategy” to refer to the mental operations involved when readers purposefully approach a text to make sense of what they read In the light of these concepts, the working definition of “reading strategies” in my study

is that specific actions consciously employed by the student for the purpose of reading

2.3.2 Classification of reading strategies

The classification of reading strategies may range from very broad one such as skimming and scanning to very sophisticated one including guessing and recognizing text structure, from

simple fix-up strategies such as re-reading difficult segments to more comprehensive strategies such as summarizing and relating what is being read to the reader‟s background knowledge (Janzen, 1996) Oxford (1990) classified reading strategies into six types including cognitive, memory, compensation, metacognitive, affective and social strategies Another author also classified reading strategies 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 (Pattersen and Van Pattersen, 1981) Pritchard (1990) compiled taxonomy of

22 reading strategies in five categories: developing awareness, accepting ambiguity, establishing intrasentential ties, establishing intersentential ties, and using background knowledge For many researchers, defining the strategies is not an end in itself They recommended the integration of reading strategies into regular classroom reading instruction They advocated a shift of emphasis from the products of comprehension to the process of comprehension In other words, teachers should teach reading strategies and techniques rather than test comprehension

2.3.3 Impact of reading strategies on reading comprehension

An impressive number of empirical investigations have established a positive relationship between strategies and reading comprehension For instance, Brookbank, Grover Kullberg, and Strawser (1999) have found that the use of various reading strategies improved the students‟ reading comprehension Certain studies in second language contexts have shown that reading comprehension may be attributed to the level of the effective use of reading strategies (Braum, 1985; Dermody, 1988) Other studies that have investigated the relationship between reading strategies and success in comprehension by speakers of other languages have produced interesting results These studies have demonstrated that different text types may call for the use of different reading strategies Studies examining the reading strategies of both good and poor readers have shown a differential use of strategies pertaining to text type Golinkoff (1975) has stated that poor readers peruse all types of texts in the same manner Similarly, Jimenez, Garcia and Pearson (1996) show that less successful bilingual readers read

both narrative and expository texts in similar ways Furthermore, researchers argue that the strategies preferred in the beginning stage of learning are not the same as those preferred in the advanced stage (Takeuchi, 2002)

2.4 The strategy of guessing from context

One problem encountered by many readers is unfamiliar vocabulary Guessing using context clues has been suggested by researchers as a solution to that problem It is an essential and good strategy for students to deal with reading texts while they can not, through vocabulary programme, acquire sufficient amount of vocabulary which is one of the most troublesome aspects of reading for second or foreign language readers

2.4.1 What is context?

Traditionally, context was seen as a given, existing fully and completely in any properly written text, and the key to using it was linguistic knowledge However, this definition is claimed to place too much emphasis on linear, bottom-up processing Thus, various definitions

of context have been proposed that include language knowledge but emphasize the role played

by high-level knowledge sources and personal experiences

According to Dycus (1997), context, at a basic level, can be defined as information that reduces uncertainty about the elements of a text, their meanings, and the meaning of the text as

a whole

Dycus (1997) classified context into local context and global context According to Dycus, local context is provided by intrasentential and sentential information while global context is provided by intersentential to discourse level information and world knowledge He also added that it is useful to distinguish between these two types of context, especially regarding the guessing strategy and second language readers since successful use of the guessing strategy often depends on which of these contexts is available and how it is useful

Sinatra and Dowd (1992) have another way of classification that divides context into two types: syntactic clues and semantic clues The syntactic clues were related to grammatical structure whereas semantic clues involved intra- and inter-sentence meaning relationship They argued that by understanding how the writer used grammar, the reader would have a direct key to unlocking a word‟s meaning The reader should also use semantic clues such as restatement, use of examples and summary clues when guessing the meaning of a new word Haastrup (1991) suggests that language learners possibly use three sources of guessing:

contextual, intralingual, and interlingual cues Contextual clues refer to one or two words

from the immediate co-text of new lexicon, the entire sentence context containing new lexical items, or a specific aspect of co-text beyond the sentence in which the new word may help in global understanding of the whole text Intralingual clues have to do with the morpho-syntactical and phonological features of the new word in which the learner utilizes his general information about phonology, orthography, morphology, word class and collocations to guess the meaning Interlingual prompts relate to a language other than the second language, e.g., the learners‟ first language Interlingual prompts are used by learners when they rely on their knowledge of their mother tongues or another language they have acquired to extrapolate or guess the meaning of a word in their second language

Brown and Yule see that “context” includes the reader‟s “internalization” of the surrounding text, i.e., the reader‟s “mental model” of the word‟s “textual context” (or co-text”) integrated with the reader‟s prior knowledge (including the reader‟s knowledge of language and meaning hypotheses developed by the reader from prior encounters with the word), but it excludes external sources of help such as dictionaries or people (Brown and Yule, 1983, p.46-50)

In investigating the role of prior knowledge, Beck pointed out that “the context that surrounds

a word in text can give clues to the word‟s meaning”, but a passage is not a clue without some other information to interpret it as a clue This implies that the clues in the text need to be supplemented with other information in order for a meaning to be figured out This supplemented information must be supplied by the reader‟s prior knowledge which might

include general “world” or cultural knowledge, and it might or might not include the

“background” knowledge that the author assumes that the reader will have

The “context” that the reader uses to figure out a word‟s meaning is not just the textual context, but a wider context consisting of the reader‟s available prior knowledge “integrated‟ with the reader‟s “internalization” of the co-text (Beck et al., 1983) While wider context is used to figure out a meaning for an unfamiliar word, for the purpose of understanding the passage containing it, textual context is used to help teach “the meaning” of the word These two uses

do not always coincide, especially of the latter includes as one of its goals the student‟s ability

to use the word

Beck et al.‟s classification divides all co-texts into two types, that is, “natural contexts” and

“pedagogical contexts” The former one refers to the contexts provided in fiction and information writings, such as newspaper articles and reports, which alone are not sufficient to help students guess correctly the meaning of the unknown words, while the later one refers to those specifically designed for the training of the strategy of guessing from context (Beck et al., 1983) Natural co-texts are divided into four categories, namely misdirective co-texts, nondirective co-texts, general co-texts and directive co-texts

To conclude, these various factors operate simultaneously for proficient readers; they usually operate quite unconsciously; and they can affect the identification of single words as well as the reader's understanding of an entire text The automatic use of context - of multiple contexts

- is a crucial part of the reading process, though most people don't realize it

2.4.2 What is guessing from context?

The notion of guessing from context arose from the analogy between L1 and L2 reading According to Oxford (1990) guessing is a compensation strategy which enables learners to use the new language for either comprehension or production despite limitations in knowledge Haastrup (1991) claim that guessing is a cognitive strategy since cognitive strategies are the steps or operations used in learning or problem solving that require direct analysis,

transformation or synthesis of learning materials and it does not automatically lead to learning, although it has the potential for doing so

As Oxford (1990) states guessing strategies involve using a wide variety of clues - linguistic

or nonlinguistic- to guess the meaning when the learner does not know all the words She adds that good language learners, when confronted with unknown expressions, make educated guesses On the other hand, less adept language learners often panic, tune out, or grab the dog-eared dictionary and try to look up every unfamiliar word – harmful responses which impede progress toward proficiency

Nassaji defines guessing from context strategies as any cognitive or metacognitive activity that the learner turned to for help while trying to derive the meaning of the unknown word from context According Pressley and Afferbach (1995), three main categories of strategy types are

identifying, evaluating, and monitoring strategies Identifying strategies were defined as those

that the learners used to identify the meaning of the new word in the text Evaluating strategies

were those that learners used to evaluate and check the accuracy of their initial guesses A

strategy was coded as monitoring when the learner showed an awareness of the nature of the

problem by making an explicit judgment about the ease or difficulty of the word based on the available cues in the text While both identifying and evaluating are cognitive strategies, monitoring is a metacognitive strategy

A number of studies have indicated that this strategy is effective and offers many advantages over laborious, time-consuming, methodical instruction in vocabulary and collocation Furthermore, it involves generalizable skills of interpreting surrounding text, predicting, and testing predictions while reading, which enhance reading skills as a whole (Nation and Coady, 1988) However, the effect of this strategy varies among different groups of students According to Carter (1987), the more advanced learners are “the more likely they are to benefit from learning words in context” (Lawson and Hogben, 1987:106) And the guessing method works well with learners who have good problem-solving skills (Hulstijn, 1992, p.114)

It has been claimed by some researchers that guessing from context is the most frequently used strategy in discovering the meaning of words, and new words can best be learned when presented in texts and when their meaning is guessred from context by learners (Lawson and Hogben, 1996, p.105) But some researchers claim that context does not always provide enough information, and learners can make wrong guesses

The problem for most students when guessing the meaning of words in a second language is that they are less confident about their understanding of the context than they would be in their native language Therefore, they tend to rely on the context less For this reason, vocabulary

“guesswork” should be integrated as often as possible into text-based activities, such as reading for comprehension, and will be most effective after a general understanding of the text has been established

2.4.3 Factors affecting students’ success in guessing meaning from context

It is most convenient to develop the strategy through reading and there are several prerequisites if guessing is going to be successful According to Nassaji (2004) factors affecting success in guessing meaning from context include the nature of the word and the text that contains the word, the degree of textual information available in the surrounding context, the learner‟s ability to make use of extra-textual cues, the importance of the word to comprehension of the text, the degree of cognitive and mental effort involved in the task, and the learner‟s attention to the details in the text as well as his or her preconceptions about the possible meaning of the word (Nassaji, 2004) Nagy (1997) also pointed the important role of

learners‟ pre-existing knowledge which is classified into three main categories: linguistic

knowledge, world knowledge, and strategic knowledge

Hinkel added that the students must have developed some skill in reading and should read a lot Ninety eight percent of the running words in the texts that are used for guessing should be already familiar to the students This means that there will be a substantial amount of comprehensible supportive context for each familiar word If these prerequisites are satisfied,

then training in guessing can have useful effects Training can focus on the linguistic clues available for guessing – the part of speech of the word, its immediate context, and its wider context of conjunction relationships – and on the background knowledge clues Because the linguistic clues are more generalizable, these should get more attention, but successful guessing depends on a combination of a language item and a message focus (Hinkel, 2005) Huckin and Bloch (1968) propose a model of guessing meaning from context that incorporates

several components including a knowledge module component and a metalinguistic strategic

component The former component includes a vocabulary knowledge module, a text schema module, a syntax and morphology module, and a text representation module, etc, while the later component includes a sequence of cognitive and decision-making strategies that the learner uses when trying to generate and test word meanings and hypotheses According to Huckin and Bloch, these strategies play an important role in guessing from context in that they help the learner decide when and how to proceed and seek help from context and various sources of knowledge available However, it should be noted in addition to above components, guessing meaning from context also involved a range of knowledge sources and strategies, that is the various cognitive the various cognitive and metacognitive activities learners use when identifying and constructing word meaning from context The strategy many range from the internal structure of the word (such as analysis of the phonological and orthographic structure of the word) to those involving the use of top-down contextual and sentence-level clues (Haastrup, 1991)

2.4.4 Approaches to teaching of guessing strategies

Guessing from context is a complex and often difficult strategy to carry out successfully Although this strategy often may not result in gaining full understanding of a word meaning and form, guessing from context may still contribute to vocabulary learning Given the continuing debate about the effectiveness of guessing from context, teachers and students should experiment with this strategy

There are different approaches to teaching the strategy of guessing from context, two of which are inductive approach and deductive approach According to Nation and Coady (1988, pp 104-150) teachers can train students the guessing strategy with a five-step inductive procedure:

1 Determine the part of speech of unknown word

2 Look at the immediate context and simplify it if necessary

3 Look at the wider context This entails examining the clause with the unknown word and its relationships to the surrounding clauses and sentences

4 Guess the meaning of unknown word

5 Check that the guess if correct

Liu and Nation (1986) suggest practicing this strategy as a class rather than an individual work And William (1986) advises that it be demonstrated on an overhead transparency or a chalk board by circling the unknown word and drawing arrows from other words that give clues to its meaning However, it seems that this inductive approach is only suitable with more advanced students because it requires better linguistic knowledge from the students

Another approach adopted by Bruton and Samuda (1981), deductive approach, is more suitable for younger students who possess less linguistic knowledge This approach may include 3 steps:

1 Guess the meaning of the word

2 Justify the guess using a variety of clues

3 Readjust the guess if necessary

Pearson and Gallagher (1983) proposed using the cycle of explanation-guided, corrective, feedback-independent, and practice-application Winograd and Hare (1988) have proposed a five-step approach, including:

practice-1 Explanation of the strategy

2 How

3 Why

4 When and where to use the strategy and

5 Self-evaluate the use of the strategy

Bruton and Samuda (1981) proposed a 6-stage guessing procedure, which provided a framework for teachers to follow:

1 Focus on the unknown word

2 Teachers asks for guesses and students hazard guesses

3 If not any students close, context clues leading to approximate meaning

4 If any students close, justify choices

5 Teacher elaboration

6 Backup

It can be seen that in almost all of the mentioned approaches, teacher explanation and modeling of the strategy is essential at the beginning stage, followed by student practice

2.4.5 Review of related studies

A number of studies have investigated the effectiveness of the strategy of guessing meaning from context on the improvement of word-attack skill in particular and reading strategy in general Three related studies (Mei, 2005) will be described in detail and discussed below

Mei (2005) examined the impact of direct instruction on the learning of the strategy of guessing from context and the use of the strategy in coping with unknown words in reading materials among young local ESL learners The instruction programme was conducted in two English classrooms in a local average-ability school Data were collected from the students of these two classes on their perception of their mastery of the strategy before and after the instruction programme through questionnaires Besides, two achievement tests (the pre-test and post-test) were done to compare the actual performance of students in the use of the

strategy before and after the instruction programme Qualitative data from lesson observation and interviews with both students and teachers were collected to triangulate with the quantitative data The findings of the study show that students do benefit from direct instruction in the learning of the strategy of guessing from context Their metacognitive awareness of the strategy was found greatly enhanced The actual performance also supports this conclusion Data from lesson observation and the interview with teachers suggest that the different beliefs of teachers had impacted greatly on the teaching approaches they adopted, which in turn determined the results of the student performance The author suggested that further studies on the content of direct instruction programme on reading strategies are worth conducting Besides, the interplay of various reading cues deserves through studies Finally, a longitudinal study will facilitate a deeper understanding of the effects of direct instruction on the learning of reading strategies

Another study done by Chan investigated the effectiveness of the inferring strategy in helping learners get the meaning of unknown words from the context through reading It is found that inferring skills are useful and there are some implications First and foremost, the inferring strategy tends to change the learners‟ attitude towards vocabulary learning They have tried to perceive vocabulary learning differently Having acquired the skill to infer meaning from the context, the learners may find it easier to tackle unknown words They also may try to work out the meaning on their own instead of consulting the dictionary The inferring strategy is a useful skill which not only helps students in tests or examinations but also saves their time Besides, the inferring strategy is one of the most important factors to facilitate vocabulary learning Learning a language, learners always feel frustrated when they come across some difficult items If they find a way to handle them, they would be more motivated The inferring strategy help students „ease their pain‟ when tackling unknown words, and therefore, students would be more willing to work out the meaning on their own One of the limitations of the study is time-constraint Therefore 4 lessons are surely insufficient to teach and practice the inferring strategy since students do not have enough opportunities to develop the inferring skill Therefore, for further studies, more time should be allocated to study the effectiveness of the inferring strategy

Nassaji (2004) examines the relationship between ESL learners‟ depth of vocabulary knowledge, their lexical inferencing strategy use, and their success in deriving word meaning from context Participants read a passage containing 10 unknown words and attempted to derive the meanings of the unknown words from context Introspective think-aloud protocols were used to discover the degree and types of inferencing strategies learners used The Word-Associate Test (WAT) was used to measure the learner‟s depth of vocabulary knowledge Results indicate a significant relationship between depth of vocabulary knowledge and the degree and type of strategy use and success They reveal that (a) those who had stronger depth

of vocabulary knowledge used certain strategies more frequently than those who had weaker depth of vocabulary knowledge; (b) the stronger students made more effective use of certain types of lexical inferencing strategies than their weaker counterparts; and (c) depth of vocabulary knowledge made a significant contribution to inferential success over and above the contribution made by the learner‟s degree of strategy use These findings provide empirical support for the centrality of depth of vocabulary knowledge in lexical inferencing and the hypothesis that lexical inferencing is a meaning construction process that is significantly

influenced by the richness of the learner‟s pre-existing semantic system

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS

This chapter describes the characteristics of the subjects, the research instruments and justifications, followed by a detailed description of the procedures of the study

3.1 The setting of the study

The study was conducted at University of Labor and Social Affairs (ULSA) which has four faculties namely Accounting, Insurance, Labor Management and Social Work Since 2005 when the university was upgraded from College of Labor and Social Affairs, it has been developed considerably both in terms of number of students and training quality The aim of the university is to provide skilled labor force for society to meet the demand of industrialization and modernization process, especially labor force for sectors of labor management, social work and insurance

All ULSA authorities agree that English is the key foreign language to help them reach their goal Therefore, teaching and learning English in this university is given much consideration Several specific innovations have been implemented in order to raise training quality in their own context, among which is the change of teaching and learning English at the institution These attempts can be seen in the curriculum of the university which allocates outnumber of periods for English among other school subjects and their encouragement to the English teaching staff to renovate their teaching methods During their course at the university, students are given 330 class-hours of English (each class-hour equals forty five minutes) of which 150 are spent on the course book Lifeline Elementary and divided equally in the first and the second semester of the first year (each semester covers 75 class hours) In the rest 150 class hours, students must take English for Special Purposes (ESP) courses with the book

"English for Labor and Social Affairs" compiled by the English Division of the university

For second-year students at ULSA, reading skill is important since their ESP curriculum focus mainly on reading ESP materials They have 6 periods of ESP lessons every week With the aim of motivating students in their reading, English teachers at ULSA spend much time

discussing to find out the most effective strategies for teaching reading skill Many instruction programmes on reading strategies have been conducted and have positive impact on students‟ reading skill performance However, this is the first time instruction programme on strategy of guessing from meaning is carried out Therefore, I myself conduct a study to investigate how effective instruction programme on strategy of guessing from context is in helping students at different levels to improve their reading skill

3.2 Subjects

The subjects in this study were 68 second-year students of Social Affairs faculty All the students were at the ages from 19 to 20 and had been living in a variety of provinces in the north and central of Vietnam This may be guessed that their social and cultural background was relatively homogeneous Moreover, the participants were selected in the second year with the assumption that they had had enough time to get used to the teaching and learning environment at the university that was quite different from that at high school It was confirmed by interviews that none of the subjects had received any instruction or training on guessing from context since strategy training is not in the school curriculum Many students usually do not speak English out of school, except when they are in some English classes in language centers or with family tutors

As no placement tests were administered to the subjects, they differed in their English reading proficiency In this study, subjects were given pre-test and post-test Not all of the 68 subjects completed the tests; eighteen subjects did not take either of the tests Those who did not complete either of the tests were excluded from the statistical analysis Based on the results of the pre-test, students were classified into three reading proficiency groups: low, intermediate, and high 15 students who received scores below 5.0 (out of a possible 10.0) were classified into the low level group; 25 students whose vocabulary scores fell in the middle of the distribution (grade equivalent scores from 5.0 to 8.0) were classified into the intermediate level group; and 10 students who obtained scores above 8.0 were classified into the high level group

The first questionnaire had two parts Part 1 was devoted to collect opinions of students on their attitudes towards the strategy of guessing from context before the instruction programme

In the second part students were given a list of 50 words and the subjects were asked to circle all the unknown words that do not look similar to them Some words in the lists were carefully selected for the subjects may not know their meanings, according to the teachers‟ judgment; while other words were randomly chosen from the students The students were not told that they would learn those words at a later stage or even would have tests on them The result of the unknown words was collected and collated The first ten words that most subjects circle were chosen as target words for pre-test and post-test The second questionnaire was to collect opinions of students on perception of their mastery, awareness and attitude towards future use

of the strategy of guessing from context after the instruction programme

The questionnaires were written in English The Vietnamese version in Appendix 1 was the translated version for the use in this study Since written in English, the questionnaires were conducted with teachers‟ explanation in Vietnamese

3.3.2 Pre-test and post-test

In this study, two separate tests, a pre-test and a post-test were carried out before and after the instruction programme to learn about students‟ actual performance on the use of strategy of

guessing meaning from context In both pre-test and post-test students were required to answer

a total of sixteen multiple choice questions It is recognized that a multiple choice format does not admit partial knowledge and furthermore, readers are constrained by the choices suggested

It did, however, allow an estimation of whether the readers knew words that they claimed to know and therefore indicated if subjects had mistakenly assumed that they knew the meaning

of a word but in fact did not know it completely, since this mistaken assumption is a major cause of guessing failure, according to Huckin and Bloch (1993) The tests were conducted by the students‟ respective ESL teachers in their classrooms so as to minimize the environmental alienation to the students

One day prior to the training, all subjects were given a pre-test which was based on their year achievement tests Six weeks later, when the subjects finished the 36-hour-long training, all subjects were given the same reading comprehension test as a post-test The rationale for using exactly the same test for both pre- and post-testing was to assure an exactly comparable test, thus avoiding the problem of equating different forms of pre-test and post-test The six-week interval between administration was deemed long enough to control for any short-term memory effect; since subjects were not provided with the correct answers after the pre-test, even were they to remember how they had answered a question the first time, they had no way

first-of knowing whether that answer was correct

3.3.3 Interviews

It is agreed that questionnaires are not sufficient for studying the use of guessing strategy Therefore, I have conducted interviews to probe more deeply into the students‟ and perceptions regarding the use of guessing strategy Interviews with students were devoted to collect students‟ opinions on how well they perceived themselves on learning the strategy of guessing from context and their attitude towards future use of the strategy Vietnamese was employed as the medium of communication in the interview so that free flow of ideas without language barrier was facilitated During interviews, the interviewees can be asked to clarify and elaborate their thought which enhances better communication Small-group interviews are

preferred to individual interviews to reduce to possible anxiety Moreover, small-group interviews also seem to be more feasible under the time constraint of the study Twelve out of

50 subjects participating in the interviews were randomly put into groups of three or four All responses from the interviewees were noted down immediately in the record sheets as the presence of a tape-recorder may result in a certain degree of emotional uneasiness among the subject Each interview lasted for less than 15 minutes Three questions were asked in the interviews No comments from the interviewer were given during the interviews The interview data was recorded, translated and then later summarized for qualitative analysis The interview questions were as follows:

1 Do you think you have used the strategy of guessing meaning from context to find the answers to the questions in the post-test? If so, can you tell me the way you did it?

2 Do you think you have learned how to use of the strategy of guessing meaning from the context after the instruction programme?

3 Do you think this instruction programme is useful for you to enhance word-attack skill and reading comprehension ability?

3.3.4 Observations

Observations are used to find out the strategies students use to guess meaning from context After finishing training sessions on five guessing strategies, in the last week students were given two passages of about 350-400 words in length Ten words in passage 1 and twelve words in passage 2 which students would be less likely to know were underlined The text was selected with the assumption that the theme will be very familiar to the participants, eliciting strong interest in the text They were asked to scan the passages and to guess the meaning of the underlined words Then they were required to write what they thought the word meant, and told that they must also describe why and how they came to such an understanding They were reminded that they could use their native language In cases where the readers knew the word already, they were instructed to note so The strategies used by students of three proficiency levels were counted and their percentages were then taken and compared

3.4 Materials and instruction programme

The subjects had the reading textbook, English for Social Affairs, which had been provided by the university; however, English teachers were allowed to use any textbooks and materials and

to develop their own tests Therefore, the teacher selected twelve reading passages which would be covered during the semester from a variety of sources Five reading passages were drawn from the subjects' textbook, and seven reading passages from popular writings or ESL reading materials The reading passages were chosen on the basis of subjects' presumed interest and for their readability because they did not contain any structure which was completely new to the subjects

The programme was conducted in 6 weeks There were altogether 12 training sessions in the programme Each session was made an extension of either the shared reading lessons or the teaching of reading comprehension The training sessions were conducted mainly in English and supplemented with Vietnamese (the subjects‟ L1) when necessary Each training session was limited to 15 minutes as Sze (1998, p.41) suggested after conducting a series of pilot studies for tertiary students on the appropriate time for instruction During the programme the students were led through five strategies of guessing meaning from context:

 Guess using visual form (similarity or morphological understanding)

 Guess using association or collocation knowledge (i.e a clue word)

 Guess using sentence level grammatical context

 Guess using discourse context i.e outside the sentence in which the word occurred (using forward or backward context)

 Guess using extra textual (thematic or world) knowledge

In every two sessions, the teacher demonstrated how to use each of five strategies to guess meaning from context In other words, the students worked through five cycles of the same approach as specified below, ensuring that they had clear input and enough consolidation to help them master the strategies

Since the subjects in this study were mixed the deductive approach to teaching the strategy of guessing meaning from context was chosen The approach used in this study was modified from the approach of Bruton and Samuda‟s (1981) guessing procedure which consisted of six stages

In the first two stages the subjects were asked to intuitively guess the meaning of the words covered Then the subjects were encourages to justify their guess with clues in the text

Teacher Asks for Guesses Students Hazard Guesses

Are any students close?

no Look at the unknown word

Teacher explains/models through thinking-aloud the steps in guessing right the meaning of the unknown words making use of the immediate context of the unknown words

Students justify choices

yes

Students reiterate the steps

Students practice on other unknown words