Some factors causing dificulties in guessing meaning from context

CANTHO UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF EDUCATION ENGLISH DEPARTMENT Supervisor: Researcher: BUI THI HONG ANH HUYNH CAM DAO Code: 7032544 B.A in ELS Course: 2003 - 2007 June 2007 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABSTRACT Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Problem and Rationale 1.2 Research Question 1.3 Thesis Organization Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definition of Reading 2.2 Context 2.2.1 Definition of Context 2.2.2 Some Types of Context and the Importance of Context 2.2.3 Some Types of Knowledge Contributed to Contextual Inference 2.3 Context Clues 2.4 Procedures of Guessing Meaning From Context 2.5 Some Factors Causing Difficulties in Guessing Meaning from Context Chapter 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3.1 What Is a Case Study? 3.2 Participants 3.3 Research Instruments CHAPTER DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS Questionnaire And Test Analysis Chapter 5: CONCLUSIONS, LIMITATIONS, IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 5.1 Conclusions 5.2 Implications 5.3 Limitations 5.4 Recommendations for Further Research REFERENCES APPENDICE APPENDICE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Ms Bùi Thị Hồng Anh, my supervisor, for her support and dedication to my research She passionately contributed her ideas and time to shaping my research paper, reading my drafts, giving me valuable advice and correcting my drafts Without her help, I would not have completed my thesis Second, I also wish to send my best gratitude to Mr Nguyễn Thu Hương, who gave me a lot of encouragement and useful sources of material Third, I am thankful to all of the teachers of the English Department for their devotion to teaching me from the first year until now and to the executive staff who gave me an opportunity to conduct the research Fourth, I also wish to show my sincere thanks to the entire Bachelor of English students of course 30 for helping me complete the questionnaire and the test Finally, I am so grateful to all of my classmates and my friends for offering me a lot of spiritual support so that I could complete the thesis ABSTRACT Because of the density of unknown words on the TOEFL test, students often encounter many problems in guessing meaning of new words when doing homework in TOEFL books that their teachers assigned them Finding out the factors causing difficulties in guessing meaning from context that the third-year English-majored students encounter is the aim of this study 60 questionnaires and a vocabulary test are delivered to them as means of investigation After analyzing and synthesizing the data, the main factors are categorized as follows: lack of vocabulary knowledge, prior knowledge and the knowledge of affixes in English as well as the insufficient context of the text Learners affected by these typical factors because they have not invested as much time as they can in studying new vocabularies, practicing exercises as well as reading books At the ultimate stage of my research, some particular measures are mentioned to help students tackle each type of factor causing difficulties in their guessing meaning process I hope that this research will be a useful reference resource for teachers in choosing and designing suitable exercises to reduce their students’ difficulties CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Problem and Rationale Reading is considered to be challenging to English learners because it requires readers to have not only strong vocabulary knowledge but also reading strategies Vocabulary acquisition is not easy; learners need a durable process of learning and practicing everyday to acquire a certain amount of vocabulary Although we have many ways of learning unknown words, we cannot remember all we have ever learned by heart We just remember some familiar words that we usually encounter or use them more often than others English vocabulary is very large and everyday it is supplemented with so many new words that we cannot find all of them in a dictionary Sometimes, we cannot comprehend an article in a magazine or an advertisement on the Internet that has many unfamiliar words Guessing meaning from context is considered as a useful way used wisely by English learners as a foreign or a second language when they read for enjoyment or for knowledge Teachers often encourage English-majored students to further reading assignments from different sources such as TOEFL, IELTS, TOEIC…to improve their reading skills as well as reading strategies Learners are required to have strong vocabulary knowledge and skills to the tests well Poor readers cannot the reading exercises well because of the new words in the text “ The problem for poor readers is not only knowing fewer words than good readers but also having no strategies for deriving meaning of an unfamiliar words from context to get comprehension” (MC Keown, 1985; Tomesen & Aarnoutse, 1998) In fact, to guess the meaning of a new word correctly is very problematic My classmates and I often face many difficulties in doing reading homework I sometimes misunderstand the meaning of a reading text as I make a wrong guess at new words It is hypothesized that if students are aware of the factors causing difficulties in meaning guessing and find the solutions to their problems, they will improve their reading skills 1.2 Research Question In my study, I attempt to find out the answers to the research question, that is, “What factors causing difficulties the third-year English students encounter in guessing meaning of an unknown word from context?” In order to find out reliable answers to the above question, I have to design a questionnaire and a reading test and then to examine whether students’ answers in the questionnaire sheet correspond to their performance in the reading test 1.3 Thesis Organization This thesis consists of five chapters Chapter one is the introduction; chapter two is literature review In this chapter, I will first review published writings to explore what has been presented on this subject and will then seek to draw some conclusions from those findings A description of methods and procedures is included in chapter three Chapter four is the analysis of the data collected from the third-year English-majored students This chapter will reveal the factors causing difficulties that these students encounter when doing vocabulary exercises The final chapter, chapter five, consists of some limitations of the study and implications for teachers and students as well as some recommendations for further research Through the collection and analysis of data, I will figure out the factors causing difficulties in meaning guessing and have some suggestions to help the English-majored students find out their own ways to tackle their problems Teachers may reconsider the exercises that they have given to their students so far, and then think of the measures to improve their students’ reading skills I hope that the following sections will help both teachers and students have an insight into my thesis CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW In this chapter, I would like to introduce the background research related to my topic Some factors causing difficulties in guessing meaning from context hypothesized by previous researchers are also presented They include: (1) inattentive Homonym, (2) lack of vocabulary knowledge, (3) affixes knowledge, (4) prior knowledge, and insufficient context 2.1 Definition of Reading Reading is a process of constructing meaning from written texts It is a complex skill requiring the coordination of a number of interrelated sources of information (Anderson et al., 1985, p.1) Similarly, Wixson, Peters, Weber, and Roeber, (1987, p.1), cite a definition of reading: reading is the process of constructing meaning through the dynamic interaction among: (1) the reader's existing knowledge; (2) the information suggested by the text being read; and (3) the context of the reading situation Moreover, according to the “Oxford English Dictionary”, reading is the activity of someone who reads In fact, we read for a variety of purposes; we often vary cognitive process and knowledge resources that we use Therefore, it is not just straightforward to identify a purpose for reading as the single way to interpret what we mean by “reading”, (Fielding 1988) 2.2 Context 2.2.1 Definition of Context According to Harold Levine (2004, p.20), a writer of “ 22,000 Words for TOEFL Examinations”, context is a part of a passage in which a word is used and helps to explain that word Suppose someone asks you the meaning of “bear”, you won’t be able to tell him the meaning because “ bear”, as presented to you, has no context But if he says “polar bear”, you will know he is talking about an animal If, on the other hand, he says, “Please stop that whistling – I can’t bear it”, you will know that in this context “bear” means endure or stand Like Harold Levine, Werner and Kaplan (1952) confirm: “context is additional information that readers can infer/ guess/ figure out the meaning of a word” However, Hirst (2000) supposes that context is anything in the circumstances of the utterance, and just anything in the participants’ knowledge or current experience It is believed that it is possible to “figure out” a meaning of a word “from context” Other terms for this process that can be found in the literature include “construct”, “deduce”, “derive”, “educe”, “guess”, “ infer”, and predict” (Putam, 1960; Fodor, 1975; Rapaport, 1998, Horst, 2003, p.7) “ Readers can guess meaning of a word from context and from the reader’s background knowledge” (e.g., Granger, 1977; Stern berg et al, 1993; Hasting & Lytinen, 1994) Context as used in these studies has the connotation of being in the external world (in particular in the text containing the words); “background knowledge” has a connotation of being the reader’s mind To sum up, context is not only an external world in particular in the text containing the words but also reader’s background knowledge, which the readers must base on to guess the meaning of a new word 2.2.2 Types of Context and the Importance of Context According to Harold Levine (2004) there are generally three kinds of context: context with contrasting words, context with similar words, and “common sense” context Context with contrasting words When you want to guess the meaning of a new word, you have to find a clue to the meaning of this word in an opposite word or a contrasting idea Context with similar words You may discover the meaning of an unfamiliar word or an expression from a similar word or an expression in the context “Common sense” context is the one different from those we have known so far It has neither an opposite word nor a similar word to help us get the meaning However, it does, offers a clue in which we find out the meaning of a new word inferred from the context Do you know what famished means? If not, you should not be able to tell from the following context: “The morning had passed way, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast.”(Washington Irving’s “ Rip Van Winkle”) How you feel when the morning has gone by and you have not had breakfast? Very hungry, of course, even starved Therefore, famished in the above context must mean “very hungry” In fact, readers make a good guess if they clearly know the kinds of context and have an appropriate way in guessing meaning to each context Why is the context important? It is important because it gives us the meaning of not only familiar words, but also unfamiliar words Furthermore, contextual vocabularies acquisition is the active deliberate acquisition of a word meaning in a text by reasoning from context without external sources of help such as dictionaries or people In addition, Duckin (1987, p.17) proposes that using context clues is an important part of vocabulary acquisition According to Anderson and Freebody (1979, p.17), students can increase their vocabulary knowledge through using context clues with morphological analysis “Context may be the single most important aid in guessing word” Hardin (1980, p.19) Context nearly always provides the necessary clues; even the dictionary also makes use of context A good dictionary provides the meaning by using the word in sentence more often than the definition itself In brief, researchers propose some common types of context in order to help readers differ one context from the others encountered in a reading text They also emphasize that context plays an important role in guessing meaning of a new word 2.2.3 Types of Knowledge Contributed to Contextual Inference Word knowledge To infer the meaning of any particular word in context, it is helpful to know the meaning of the words around it However, how to understand the neighboring words is a problem likely to be faced by many foreign language readers Garcia (1991) cites that knowing a word involves much more knowing a definition Besides information about a word meaning, word knowledge helps us recognize other components such as syntactic frame in which a word occurs, the word’s collocation potential, morphology (the prefixes and suffixes it occurs), and its semantic relationship with other words Syntactic knowledge The meaning of a word determines its syntactic behavior The syntactic of a word provides crucial information (Landau & Gleitman, 1985) Students are able to use parts of speech and other syntactic information as clues to the meaning of new words Brown (1975) shows that the use of a word as a noun or a verb leads students to different inferences about its meaning Structural analysis allows a reader who encounters an unknown word to limit feasible definitions by approaching the whole word and identifying its part (Vacca, 1989) Prior knowledge is what the reader has before reading, i.e the beliefs the readers brings to the text are available for use in order to understand it ( Baldwin , 1986) World knowledge connotes general factual knowledge about things other than what the text is about (Hirsch 1987, 2003) 2.3 Context clues What are context clues? Nagy (1985, p.2) indicates that context clue is a crucial strategy dealing with unknown words when readers read a text The ability to infer the meaning from context is clearly a valuable skill that should play a part in reading The more clues take into account, the greater are the chances of guessing an unknown word When dealing with a new text, students should be encouraged to make a guess of the word meaning rather than to look up a new word immediately in a dictionary To make clear the above ideas, Elaine Kirn (1995, p.5) supports that when you read, you not need to look up the meanings of all new words in a dictionary You can guess the meaning of them through the other items in context - the other words in the sentence or the other sentences in the paragraph The following are introduced to recognize context clues: Ø Sometimes a sentence gives a definition of a new vocabulary item or information about it This information may be in parentheses (), after a dash (-), or after a comma (,), or it may be introduced by the words for example, for instance Ø Sometimes the meaning or a clue to the meaning of a new vocabulary item is in another sentence part Ø Sometimes another word or words in another sentence or sentence part has the opposite meaning of a new vocabulary item Ø Certain abbreviations (shortened forms words) help you understand a new word or phrase Here are two: e.g = for example i.e = that is = in other words Example: this is a group of micro entrepreneurs-i.e… People who own and run their own business What are micro entrepreneurs? They are people who own and run their own small business Ø Context has an explanation of the new word, but in order to think of a synonym you need to change a part of speech Example: for many people, there seems to be no escape from poverty; in other words, they are poor and they have no hope that this will change In this example, you see that poverty is close in meaning to poor, but the two words are different parts of speech Poverty is a noun and poor is an adjective (what is poverty, Ø poorness or the condition of being poor) Sometimes a parallel structure of two sentences or clauses can help you understand new words In a parallel structure, there are often synonyms corresponding words or opposites good hint to base on and derive the meaning In item 4, students could immediately know the “sentence” in this context could not mean “ a set of words expressing a statement” It must be one of the remaining three answers “a judgment upon”, “saying officially by a court” or “a punishment by a court” The word “prisoner” was a good clue for them to make a good guess at the word “sentence” meaning “a punishment given by a court” Similarly, in item 5, regarding the context, they could know that “match” in this sentence meant “a small stick made of wood that is used for lighting a fire” The word “brighter” helped them confirm their answers However, in item 6, nearly 50% of students could not have a correct choice The number of correct answers to item was lower than the others In conclusion, the evidence collected from the questionnaire corresponded to their performance in the test The percentage of students who gave the wrong meaning to the homonyms was rather low Question 6(in the questionnaire) Table 6.1 Question Students’ answers rarely sometimes meaning of affixes of a new (0%) (1.7%) You … guess the often 8.3%) usually always 49 (8.3%) (81.7%) word Table 6.2: Group (items and 8) in the test Affixes knowledge Participants’ Guessing the meaning of the following words: Item 7: “ excluded” correct answers 11.7% Item 8: “ bicentennial” 32% The purpose of question is to consider whether students might infer the meaning of a new word while doing a reading exercise in case of not knowing the meaning of a affix attached to it or not Looking at table 6.1, we can see the results as follows: 81.7 % of students (49 choices) chose “always” which meant that they encountered little of problems with suffixes The percentage of students who chose “usually” and “often” is equal, 8.3% They usually or often faced the difficulties in inferring the meaning of a prefix or suffix Finally, 1.7 % stated “sometimes” However, items and in the test (appendices 2) that tested students’ knowledge of affixes revealed that only 11.7% and 32% of the participants had the correct answers It meant that they could not guess the meaning of the prefix “-ex” and “-bi” Comparing the objectives’ responses in the questionnaire with their practice in the test, we can infer that most respondents thought that they could guess the meaning of affixes of a new word They supposed that they could break a new word up into many syllables to guess the meaning of its prefix or suffix However, only 11.7% of students had the correct answer to the word “ excluded” and 32% to the word “bicentennial” Maybe, they knew some prefixes and suffixes, which they learned before, but they could not understand the meaning of some unfamiliar affixes This finding correspond to the theory hypothesized by Craik (1995, p.14) Question 7( in the questionnaire): Table 7.1: Question When you read a specialized text, you … know the Objectives’ answers rarely sometimes often usually always 16 23 14 (26.7%) (38.3%) (23.3%) (8.3%) (3.4%) technical term that the writer uses in the text Table 7.2: Group (items and 10)) in the test Lacking of prior knowledge Guessing the meaning of the following words: Students’ wrong answers Item 9: “minute” 86.7% Item 10: “stigma” 66.3% The purpose of question was to examine whether it is difficult for students to guess the meaning of a new word when they lack the prior knowledge of a specialized domain Looking at the table 7.1, we can see that most participants supposed they had difficulties in figuring out the meaning of a new word Particularly, 26.7 % (16 participants) chose “A” meant that they rarely knew the meaning of technical terms; 23.3% chose “often”, 38.3% (23 students) chose “sometimes”, and 8.3% (5 choices) chose “usually” Those are the findings obtained from the questionnaire And the result of 60 responses in the test was as follows: 52 of the participants (86.7%) had incorrect answers to item and 38 students (66.3%) to item 10 The results of the questionnaire and the test imply that students lacked prior knowledge in guessing the meaning of a technical term word This demonstrated in sentence and 10 in the test Table 7.2 revealed that the percentage of the wrong answers to both items was rather high Their responses in the questionnaire was relevant their responses in the exercise Therefore, we could imply that the respondents could not understand the meaning of a technical term when they did not have any specialized domain knowledge in that field To infer the meaning of the word “minute”, they must have the basic biological knowledge to recognize “very common” a similar meaning of “minute” In item 10, it is very important for students to self-repair the knowledge of American culture in order to deduce the meaning of the word “ stigma” They must combine the context of the excerpt and their prior knowledge to imply correctly In short, most of majored-English students (76.5%) lacked prior knowledge when taking this test with the technical terms Question 8( in the questionnaire): Table 8.1 Students’ answers Question always Information in the context is enough not… to guess its (0%) usually (8.3%) often Sometimes 41 14 (23.3%) (68.4%) meaning Table 8.2: Group 5(items 11, 12, 13, and 14) in the test: Insufficient context Guessing the meaning of the following Students ’ incorrect words: answers Item 11: “muted” 63.4% Item 12: “malice” 80% Item 13: “ chaste” 66.7% Item 14: “maiden” 59% According to table 8.1, 68.4 % of the students recognized that a test sometimes did not provide enough information for them to deal with a new word 63.4%, 80%, 66.7% and 59% of the participants gave the wrong answers to question 11, 12, 13 and 14 in the test They were not able to figure out the meaning of such new words as “muted”, “malice”, “ chaste”, and “maiden” because the writer did not supply them with a clear context or give them any clues to find out the synonym of the new word It is clear that the participants are very confused in selecting the right choice In item 11, they did not understand what colors the writer referred to in this context It may be “dark”, “bright”, “warm” or “dull” All of the colors may be acceptable in the context In item 12, it was also difficult for the students to find out the similar meaning to the word “malice” which was in a single sentence without supplying any clues Hence, we can confirm that context without clues is not useful for students This result was quite fixed with the hypothesis that was stated by Hunt and Alan (1996) Question 9(in the questionnaire): Chart 9: Chart showed that 41.6 % of English students agreed that reading information from different sources was an effective way to improve meaning guessing According to them, it was the best way to broaden their knowledge of specialized fields that they had not approached They neither needed to reading exercises nor had to study vocabularies everyday However, another group of 19 students (31.7 %) thought that the effective way to improve reading strategy was to read books and learn vocabularies everyday By doing so, they not only reviewed the vocabularies of the previous lessons but also studied more unknown words to enrich their vocabulary knowledge They could infer many new vocabularies while reading a story or a reference book Unlike the previous two groups, the last one supposed that doing exercises frequently was also a useful way to avoid factors that cause difficulties in guessing meaning from context Therefore, 26.7% of students chose this method They would have a chance to drill different kinds of exercises and get acquainted with the level of difficulty of each type Gradually, they could these exercises better and more easily However, in my point of view, learning vocabularies everyday and doing vocabulary exercises frequently is an effective way to improve their guessing strategy We need not take more time in guessing meaning from context; our reading ability will be improved And we could reading exercises well Chapter CONCLUSIONS, LIMITATIONS, IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 5.1 Conclusions The results of the research revealed that most of the third-year English students (87.7%) encountered many new words while doing the reading section in TOEFL test Although they tried to guess the meaning of an unknown word from context, 43.3% thought that word guessing from context in reading was not easy According to the results, the factors causing difficulties in their guessing meaning process were students’ lack of vocabulary knowledge, affixes knowledge, and prior knowledge and insufficient information supplied in the text However, most of students (75%) had correct answers to the question related to the homonym This contradicted the theory suggested by yueh Shen (2002, p.13), that is, students gave a variety of wrong meaning for the homonym words with multiple meanings Another finding was that 80% of English students faced difficulties in meaning inferences because they did have weak vocabulary knowledge It meant that the students with poor vocabulary knowledge could not apply the guessing skills to the test This phenomenon is familiar with Laufer & Sim’s hypothesis (1985) which is learners cannot make use of the context clues because of poor vocabulary knowledge On the question dealt with suffixes attached to new words, most students (78%) could not think of the meaning of the words attached to prefixes”-bi” and “-ex” This clarifies Craik’s ideas (1995, P.14) “ Affixes play an important role in guessing meaning of a new word because readers consider it as a clue to infer the meaning of an unfamiliar word occurred in the text” In answering the questions in questionnaire relating to poor vocabulary knowledge and affixes, students did not think that they had problems with inferring the neighboring meaning of a new word and affixes; however, the percentage of incorrect answers was rather high In addition, 76.5 % the participants had difficulties in guessing meaning of the word that needed prior knowledge It is not enough for them to derive the meaning of a word just based on the contextual text (Dubin and Olshtain 1993); contextual guessing involves nonlinguistic prior knowledge On the question concerning context factor, the participants supposed that they could infer the meaning of an unknown word in case of not being supplied enough information in the context But, most of them (67.3%) could not this in the test This problem is formulated in the theory of Hunt and Alan (1996), that is, local contexts are not helpful without clues for an unknown word; single context does not give enough information for EFL students to figure out the meaning of a word In conclusion, if the English-majored students had been aware of all the factors causing difficulties in meaning guessing and found out their own ways to get over these obstacles, they would have improved their reading skills in general and guessing strategies in particular 5.2 Implications I hope that this research will be helpful for both English students and teachers at the English Department Students can avoid encountering the difficulties by doing reading exercises more frequently Self-learning vocabulary is also an effective way to increase their vocabulary knowledge In addition, they can read different books from various reference sources in the library to enlarge their knowledge and develop their reading skills By doing so, they may consider the reading subject to be more fun and interesting Also, they will discover more exciting things during the reading process and think that reading is no longer a difficult and dry subject Another possibility is that reading teachers can find something new from my study which may be useful for their teaching They will be more aware of the reasons why their students cannot have the correct answers to word guessing and think of ways to solve their students’ difficulties They can design more exercises about word guessing to help students reduce the problems Particularly, for students lacking vocabulary knowledge and prior knowledge, teachers can suggest such activities as reading books and stories, playing puzzles, watching T.V, or listening to the radio In class, they can organize some games in order that students can learn new words with their friends and remember the meaning of the words longer It is also a chance for them to review what they have learnt at home with their classmates Besides, teachers may require their students to reading tests like TOEFL or IELTS tests as their homework Providing different material to students is also a good way that teachers should have to help their students widen prior knowledge By doing so, students can approach various reading sources in different specialized domains and apply their reading skills to things inside and outside of the classroom In short, expectedly, both teachers and students can get benefits from these recommended ways to make their teaching and learning reading more effective and inspiring 5.3 Limitations While conducting this research, I learned many useful things such as seeking and collecting information skills, knowing more new websites, and developing reading skills However, at the same time with conducting the study, I was required to finish some compulsory credits in the training program It took me a lot of time to fulfill my duty in class Time was limited Therefore; I could not more than I had hoped before I could not spend more time reading all of the material I searched on the Internet And I also could not apply the SPSS process to my research, which was taught by Mr Lập and Mr Tuấn in order to help students to achieve the reliability in analyzing the data Moreover, I got many difficulties in finding out background theory related to my topic to write the literature review and designing a test with adequate questions for the participants To sum up, Time is one of the main factors that caused difficulties during the time of carrying out my thesis Hopefully, I am very pleased to welcome all of the comments from my teachers as well as the readers 5.4 Recommendations for Further Research Vocabulary is a rich topic that English learners can explore more In my study, I just mentioned word-guessing meaning and designed one test I suggest that the latter researcher should design the pretest and posttest in order that they can get high reliable level It would be better if he or she could indicate the learners how to get over the difficulties in guessing meaning of new words so that the students can improve their reading ability In this research, I haven’t mentioned any reading exercises to students So, I recommend that the latter researcher should include more reading exercises in order that the learners can practice by themselves at home or in their free time Moreover, the study of meaning guessing would be more interesting if the latter could study the ways to enlarge the students’ vocabulary knowledge These are some suggestions drawn out from my research for further research to make the research better and more sufficient REFERENCES Ivana, V (2001) The effect of using a dictionary and inferring from context on the incidental acquisition and retention of vocabulary Asia Pacific University Anjel, T & James, C (2004) Successful learning of frequent vocabulary through CALL also benefits reading comprehension and speed Defense language Institute, USA : USA and OHIO University William, J (2000) What is the context for contextual vocabulary acquisition? Buffalo : State University of New York Http:// www Cse Buffalo Edu/ ~rapport/ cva.html Elain, K (1997) Interactions two: A reading skills book West Lost Angeles College and Pamela Hartmann: Los Angeles Unified School District Hossein, N (2003) L2 vocabulary learning from context Canada : University of Victoria : Victoria British Columbia Graw, M (1997) Mosaic one: A reading skill book, Third Edition Brenda Wegmann and Miki Prijic Knezevic Batia, L (2003) Vocabulary acquisition in a second language: Do learners really acquire most vocabulary by reading? Some Empirical Evidence Published in The Canadian Modern Language Review Hunt, A (1996) Constraint on inferring word meaning from context Kansai Gadai University Journal of Inquiry and Research David, D (1997) Guessing meaning from context: should it be encourage? 10 Ming, Y.H (2002) An Investigation Of Low Achievers’ Process Of Word Inference: A Case Study Of Technical University Learners National Formosa University 11 Nagy, W E (1995) On the role of context in first and second language acquisition Urbana : University of Illinois 12 William, R (2000) In defense of contextual vocabulary acquisition: How to things with words in context Buffalo : State University of New York 13 Ronald, C (1998) Vocabulary- applied linguistic perspectives New York University 14 Anne, S (1995) Learning vocabulary from context Urbana : IL 15 Miller, S (1995) Vocabulary development and context usage Kean College of New Jersey 16 Houghton, M (1997) Definitions of reading and word identification 17 Harold, L (1994) 22.000 words in TOEFL examination Translators: Trần Thanh Sơn Trần Thị Xuân Hương Ho Chi Minh City Publishing House 18 Elizabeth , D & Karen, D (1992) TOEFL reading and vocabulary workbook (2nd ed) Prentice Hall General Reference New York 19 Michael, P & Mary, E (1995) TOEFL preparation guide (5th ed) Youth Publishing House 20 Quách, Ng (2003) Chương trình luyện thi TOEFL NXB Trẻ 21 Harriet, N & Edith, D.(2000) Test of English as a foreign language Published by Prentice Hall Press New York Appendices Your name: Age: Class: Please Circle A, B, C or D to answer the following questions Do you encounter many new words while reading? A Always B Usually C Often D Sometimes What you to guess the meaning of a new word when encountering it? A Using a dictionary B Guessing meaning from context C Asking teachers or friends around you D Other ways: Do you think guessing meaning from context is difficult? A Yes B No C No ideas D Other ideas: _ When doing a reading exercise, You … know the meaning of other words around a new word (an explanation, or an example is used to explained the new word) A rarely B sometimes C often D usually E always You …… mistake the meaning of a new word with its homonym A rarely B.sometimes C.often D usually E always You ……know the meaning of some suffixes of a new word A rarely B sometimes C often D.usually E always When you read a specialized text, you ……… know the technical terms that the writers use in the text A rarely B sometimes C often D usually E always Information supplied in the context is not…… enough to guess the meaning of anew word A always B usually C often D.sometimes How can you avoid factors causing difficulties in guessing meaning from context? A Reading books and learning vocabulary everyday to enlarge my knowledge vocabularies B Looking for reading exercises and practicing them frequently C Reading information form different references to broaden knowledge of a specialized domain …etc Thank you for your co-operation! Appendices Your name: Class: Please guess the meaning of the underlined words in the following sentences: Lichens are hardy They grow in many habitats and are often pioneers in hostile environments where few organisms can flourish A tender B durable C armed D beneficial The center for Disease control reported that the epidemic of the viral disease called acute hemorrhagic conjunctivitis shows no signs of abating A spreading B recurring C worsening D subsiding This change in volume may cause the lungs to distend and even rupture A hurt B shrink C burst D stop The judge passed sentence on the prisoner A a set of words expressing a statement B a judgment upon C saying officially by a court D a punishment given by a court Jack entered the room, clocked the door, stroked a match and then fell asleep everything in his room seems brighter A a small stick made of wood that is used for lighting a fire B sports event where people or teams compete against C thing that looks exactly the same as something else D thing that combines well with something She has more ground than her next-door neighbor, so she can plant plenty kind of trees in front of her house A a small piece of solid matter in a liquid that have fallen to the bottom B a garden C an area of land D surface of the earth The elderly are not excluded from rent raises that all tenants have to pay when he makes a major improvement A obliged B included C eliminate D consist of The bicentennial celebration lasted for six months A divided by 100 B 100 years’ C 200 years’ D 50 years’ The protozoan, minute aquatic creatures, each of which consists of a single cell of protoplasm, constitute a classification of the primitive forms of animal life A very common B very fast C very old D very small 10 The United States is do-it-yourself country We carry out our own bags, take our laundry to the Laundromat, stand in line at the grocery store, or shine our own shoes, whoever we may be – lawyer, professor, bank president, or corporate executive Anyone who can afford the high cost of service in this country and wants pay for it, but there is absolutely no social stigma in doing one’s own daily chores, no matter how menial stigma : A new rule B good word C negative mark D law 11 I prefer muted colors in my living room A dull B dark C bright D warm 12 She is entirely without malice A sedition B impunity C discontent D malevolence 13 In early American novels, the heroines were usually chaste A scheming B earnest C fickle D virtuous 14 The ship left New York on her maiden voyage A first B final C fast D famous Thank you for your co-operation! 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University apply the above procedure in their guessing process They followed each step in guessing meaning of a new word However, sometimes they fail in inferring meaning from context So, I would like to explore the difficulties that affect these students’ performance 2.5 Some Factors Causing Difficulties in Guessing Meaning from Context Guessing meaning of a word from context clues is the most useful... of correct guessing meaning of unfamiliar words are declined Strategies in making contextual inferences can fail when conditions for guessing meaning are not favorable Many researchers find that meaning is one of the factors causing problems in guessing meaning of a word from context Ruhl (1989) cites that words can be assigned a single, general meaning and apparent meaning variability explained by general... base on guessing what the word means To sum up, researchers have different points of view about the factors causing difficulties in guessing meaning from context The studies that the writer has presented indicate that the following are the factors causing difficulties in guessing meaning from context: homonym, lacking of vocabulary knowledge, prior knowledge, suffixes knowledge and insufficient context. .. reading section in TOEFL test Although they tried to guess the meaning of an unknown word from context, 43.3% thought that word guessing from context in reading was not easy According to the results, the factors causing difficulties in their guessing meaning process were students’ lack of vocabulary knowledge, affixes knowledge, and prior knowledge and insufficient information supplied in the text However,... them to derive the meaning of a word just based on the contextual text (Dubin and Olshtain 1993); contextual guessing involves nonlinguistic prior knowledge On the question concerning context factor, the participants supposed that they could infer the meaning of an unknown word in case of not being supplied enough information in the context But, most of them (67.3%) could not do this in the test This... dealing with a new word or not Group 2 related to the homonym factor with the arguments on whether the participants are confused in guessing the meaning of a word with its homonym Group 3 is about the problems with affixes Group 4 is to consider whether the students lack prior knowledge in guessing meaning process and the final one, group 5, mentions the context factors causing difficulty in meaning inferences... word, most of them had the same ways in dealing with unknown items, that was, guessing meaning from context The result was shown clearly in chart 2, 88.3 % of students guessed the meaning of a word from the context When looking at table 3, we can see that among 60 students, only 43.3% (26 students) answered “yes” to the question 3 which meant guessing meaning from context was difficult; 14 students 23.3%... acquire most vocabulary by reading? Some Empirical Evidence Published in The Canadian Modern Language Review 8 Hunt, A (1996) Constraint on inferring word meaning from context Kansai Gadai University Journal of Inquiry and Research 9 David, D (1997) Guessing meaning from context: should it be encourage? 10 Ming, Y.H (2002) An Investigation Of Low Achievers’ Process Of Word Inference: A Case Study Of Technical... ways to make their teaching and learning reading more effective and inspiring 5.3 Limitations While conducting this research, I learned many useful things such as seeking and collecting information skills, knowing more new websites, and developing reading skills However, at the same time with conducting the study, I was required to finish some compulsory credits in the training program It took me a... reading comprehension skills From the fact, I think that students in my study have stable foundations of guessing meaning from context in reading 3.3 Research Instruments Questionnaire Questionnaires are used as an instrument to collect data in my study The questionnaire consists of two main parts: the first one is to get the participants’ personal information and the other is to explore the factors causing