Chan Suk Wa
Introduction
Vocabulary, like grammar, is an essential component of all uses of language. However, students always complain that they do not know the meaning of all the words they find in the passages and therefore they have difficulties in comprehending the passages. On the other hand, Fox (cited in Long & Richards, 1987:309) claims that it is not necessary to know every word that one will ever encounter in English. He asserts that it is possible that people fail to understand a word and they can still understand the sentence or the paragraph it is in, or even deduce the meaning of an unknown word from its context. This study is inspired by such view. I would like to look into strategies that can help my students decode the meaning from the context independently through reading.
Background
Being an English teacher, I am concerned with the way that my students learn English and the problems they have encountered when learning English. The most common problem that my students have is that they cannot understand a sentence or a paragraph when there are words they do not know. They think that it is a must to understand every single word.
In response to this problem, I began to evaluate the way that my students read a passage. I found that they always stopped whenever they came across difficult words. They lacked confidence in dealing with unknown words. Some hardworking students would look up every word they did not know in the dictionary. Sometimes I could find passages with more than a hundred of meanings in Chinese. It is not only a waste of time but also a bad practice of handling difficult words. In order to help my students deal with vocabulary better, I began to look into strategies that could help solve the problem.
The research was initiated on vocabulary learning. The research questions are as follows:
1. Can inferring strategy help students decode the meaning of unknown words from the context?
2. Can inferring strategy help students gain confidence in dealing with unknown vocabulary?
The research was based on these questions to formulate. The main concern of this study is to investigate whether the inferring (guessing) strategy can enable learners to get the meaning of new words from the context through reading. It is hoped that it helps learners work on the vocabulary they come across independently. The strategy is of vital significance since it is useful to students when they are having tests or examinations.
Literature Review
From the literature I have read, it is found that learners should be helped to develop their ability to make use of the contextual clues to infer the meaning (Gairns & Redman, 1991; Scherfer, 1993). To guess the meaning, learners can look closely at the unknown words, next look at its immediate context and then take a much broader view of how the clause containing the word relates to other clauses, sentences or paragraphs. Some research studies (Liu & Nation, 1985; Saragi et al, 1978; Seibert, 1945, cited in Nation, 1990:160) indicate that a large proportion of unknown words (at least 80 percent) can be successfully dealt with in this way. Therefore, this strategy plays an important role in tackling unknown words when reading.
In addition, Honeyfield (cited in Long & Richards, 1987:320-323) suggests two types of exercises for practising guessing words from context. The first is a cloze exercise where gaps are made. Learners are asked to make use of the available information in the context to fill in the context words. This exercise involves many of the requirements of guessing from context. The second type of exercise provides multiple choice answers either for the meaning of the unknown word or for the clues which give the meaning.
To conclude, inferring strategy is useful to help learners deal with unknown words when reading. It helps learners decode the meaning of the unknown words from the context. Hence, the purpose of this study is to investigate the inferring strategy to find out its effectiveness in helping learners get the meaning of new words from the context through reading.
Methodology
To find out whether the inferring strategy can help learners perform better when dealing with vocabulary, three sets of data were intended to collect.
First, pre- and post-questionnaires were distributed before the study and after the study to find out if there were any changes in learners’ attitude towards vocabulary learning and in the strategies they employed to deal with vocabulary.
Second, an interview was given to a group of eight students to get their opinions towards the inferring strategy. The interview enabled the researcher to obtain more information about the effectiveness of the strategy.
Third, a test on cloze exercise was designed to find out whether the learners gained benefit from learning the inferring strategy.
Implementation of Action Plan
In the study, 4 lessons were designed to help the learners master the inferring strategy. The subjects of the study were a class of S5 students . Before the action, the students were asked to complete a pre-questionnaire so as to find out their perceptions in vocabulary learning and the strategies they employed when dealing with vocabulary.
After the preliminary study, the inferring strategy was taught in the 4 lessons. The objectives of the lessons were to enable the students to identify nouns, verbs and adjectives in a text, understand their relation in a sentence and infer the meaning of unknown words.
After the introduction of the inferring strategy, students were asked to do a cloze exercise with the help of the teacher. The teacher helped the students look closely at the unknown words and look at its immediate context in an attempt to help them make use of the contextual clues to infer the meaning. With a view to providing the students to work on their own to practice the inferring strategy, some more cloze exercises were given to each student in the following lessons.
In the fourth lesson, a test on cloze exercise was administered to test the students’ ability in inferring the meaning from the context and the effectiveness of the inferring strategy.
On the same day, a post-questionnaire was given to each student and eight students were invited to an interview.
Result and Discussion
In this study, three sets of data were collected through pre- and post-questionnaires, an interview and result of a cloze test. The following are findings and discussion of the data.
1. Data from the pre- and post-questionnaires and the interview
The questionnaires aimed at looking at whether there were any changes in students’ attitude towards vocabulary learning and their confidence in dealing with vocabulary exercises after the teaching of the inferring strategy.
Comparing the pre- and post-questionnaires, it was found that there were changes in students’ attitude towards vocabulary learning. Before the study, 80% of the students claimed that they found that it was difficult to learn the meaning of English vocabulary. Only 2.5% of the students said they liked doing vocabulary exercises and 7.5% of them expressed they were interested in doing comprehension exercises. The attitudes of the students towards vocabulary learning and dealing with vocabulary were negative. However, after the intervention, in the post-questionnaire, 25% of the students said they had difficulties in learning English vocabulary. More students (60%) claimed that they liked doing vocabulary exercises and 75% stated that they were interested in doing comprehension exercises. So, their attitude was positive.
Concerning the students’ confidence in doing vocabulary exercises, it was found that the number of the students claiming that they were confident doubled after the teaching of the inferring strategy.
In the interview, the students were asked about the opinions of the inferring strategy. All of the eight interviewees expressed that identifying the part of speech and guessing were useful. They stressed the importance of understanding the sentence elements which were crucial to deal with unknown words. It could help them locate certain words in a sentence. The strategy also could help them deal with comprehension exercises.
2. Data from the cloze test
The cloze test aimed to find out whether the students could benefit from using the inferring strategy when doing a cloze test. From the result of the test, it was found that the students performed better and the improvement was significant. Before the study, only 25% of the students passed a cloze test, but 60% of the students passed the test after the teaching of the inferring strategy.
Conclusion
The main concern of this study is to investigate 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.
During the action, it was found that some students failed to guess the right meaning of some words. Due to the fact that every context is unique, students must have sufficient practice so as to enable them to work on their own to infer meaning correctly. Personally, I think the inferring strategy is like a problem-solving skill. To make use of this skill successfully, practice is significantly needed. Without sufficient practice, it is difficult to acquire the skill.
Besides, students sometimes had problems to identify the part of speech of the unknown words. In fact, it is not easy to identify because an unknown word can be a verb or a noun in different situations. I suggest teachers spend time on helping students identify the part of speech of unknown words. It needs to be reinforced from time to time so that students can process the language effectively.
For the present study, one of the limitations is time-constraint. As I have mentioned before, practice makes perfect. Therefore 4 lessons is 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. Also, this study tested whether the inferring strategy could help students in doing cloze tests and the result was positive. However, the effectiveness of the inferring strategy in comprehension exercises was not evaluated. So I would suggest a further study should be carried out to find out whether students benefit from using the inferring strategy in comprehending a passage.
To conclude, from the study, the inferring strategy helped the students perform better in vocabulary and students were more interested in vocabulary learning after the introduction of the inferring strategy. It can help students decode meaning of words in context. When learners know how to process the language, they can understand the language better and use it better. In this study, it is found that the inferring strategy is one of the useful skills that enable learners to decode the meaning of unknown words.
Reference
1. Gairns, R. & Redman, S., 1991, Working with Words, Cambridge.
2. Honeyfield, J., 1977, Word Frequency and the Importance of Context in Vocabulary Learning.
3. Nation, I. S. P., 1990, Teaching and Learning Vocabulary, Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.
4. Scherfer, P. 1993, Reivew Article: Indirect L2 Vocabulary Learning, Linguistics, Vol. 31, 1141 –1153.
Appendix – Questionnaire (Pre- and Post- Questionnaires)
The purpose of this questionnaire is to get some information on how you feel about vocabulary. Your comments will help me understand how you learn vocabulary and give me some reflection on my teaching. The information you give will be kept confidential.
Part A
For each sentence, please circle a correct answer.
1
2
3
4
5
Strongly agree
agree
no opinion
disagree
strongly disagree
1. I like doing vocabulary exercises.
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2
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5
2. I find it easy to do vocabulary exercises.
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5
3. I think I must understand all the words in order to understand the passage.
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5
4. I feel confident when doing vocabulary exercises.
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5
5. I look up from the dictionary when I come across difficult words.
Part B
The following are some vocabulary learning activities. Please indicate which two activities are the most important to help you understand the passage and the answers in the blanks.
1. Vocabulary dictation
2. Revision, e.g. copying new words 10 times
3. New words are explained in English or Cantonese by teacher
4. Guess the meaning of words when reading
5. Check the meaning from dictionary
6. Identifying the part of speech in a sentence, e.g. noun, verb, adjective
Answers: Number __________ Number __________
The End
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