People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria

Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research

Larbi Ben M'Hidi University, Oum El Bouaghi

Faculty of Letters and Languages

Department of English

The Importance of the Contextual-Guessing Strategy in Facilitating

the Students’ Reading Comprehension

The Case of Third Year LMD Students, L’arbi Ben M’Hidi

University

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Letters and Languages,

Department of English, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the

Degree of

Master in Language Sciences and Teaching English as a Foreign Language

by

BOUNAB Samira

Supervisor: Mrs. KHALDI Hafida

Examiner: Mr. CHAIRA Farid

2013-2014

DedicationDedicationDedicationDedication

In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, Most Merciful, All the Praise is due to Him alone,

the Sustainer of the entire World.

Above all, I thank Allah, the most Compassionate and the most Graceful that has

empowered me and blessed me to finish this work.

I dedicate this work to:

My grateful mother whose love strengthens me, your praying to Allah for me really pushed

me to reach the entire degree in my life, i love you mother.

My father, your belief in me, patience, love, and strong support made my way to success.

My Grandmother, you overwhelmed me with your sympathy throughout my life; you

made me what I am now. Without you I would never reach this degree, thank you a lot.

To my Grandfather, may Allah bless him; I wish that I could satisfy your desire to be a

successful person.

To my elder sister HAKIMA, your family was my second family here in Oum El Bouaghi, to

her husband KAMEL, to their children:Aymen, Amani, Maroi, and Bibo. To their new baby

Ibtihel. I love each one of you.

To all my sisters, to my brothers RIDHA and BILEL who I respect a lot.

To my uncle Haider, and his wife SAMIRA who contribute enormously in this work by

believing that I can finish it on time. To their children: Tajou and Khadidja.

To my soul mates: Kenza, Sana, Samra, Imen, Soumia, Chahra, Rima and Hayat we had

great times toghether, I would never forget you.

To everyone who knows me, loves me and besought Allah to me.

II

Acknowledgement

Many people participated in the achievement of the present dissertation.

I would like to give sepecial thanks to my supervisor, Mrs. Khaldi Hafida, without her I

would have never been able to complete this work, I am grateful to her for her precious

observations, suggestions, guidance, continuous patience, and the time she spent evaluating

the realization of this work. Thank you a lot for your recommendations.

I would like to extend my honest thank to Mr. Farid Chaira who accepted reading and

examining my thesis. I thank him also for his guidance and help in designing this work.

I greatly appreciated the help and the support of our teachers, in the department of English

without any exception.

I would also like to thank all third year students who accepted to fill in our questionnaire and

took part in this research.

Last but not least, my sincere thanks are to be addressed to the entire 60 MASTER 2 students

(Linguistics), it was a great pleasure to know all of you.

.

III

Abstract

Reading is a platform for developing the other skills: speaking, writing, and listening. It is the

source of vocabulary knowledge enlargement. However, it was given a little interest in the

English Department at L’arbi Ben M’hidi University, Oum El Bouaghi. This affects the

learners’ awareness towards the significance of this skill in learning a foreign language. Most

students find reading difficult due to their lack of vocabulary knowledge. That is to say,

encountering vocabulary problems may affect their reading comprehension which is in return

the ultimate goal behind reading. Therefore, to facilitate this skill, i.e, “reading

comprehension” for students; it is important to adopt certain strategies to deal with these

problems. In fact, many studies have shown that the contextual-guessing strategy is among

the most important strategies that can help students to read and comprehend better. For this

reason, our aim in this dissertation is to know about the students and teachers’ perceptions

concerning the importance of this strategy and to see to what extent it may help learners to

develop their reading comprehension. Therefore, to accomplish this study, we administered

two questionnaires. The first one was given to sixty third year LMD students in the English

Department at L’arbi Ben M’hidi University, during the academic year 2013/2014. Our aim is

to get insights about students’ views concerning reading comprehension, vocabulary

problems, and the importance of the contextual-guessing strategy to deal with the impeding

factors in order to facilitate their reading comprehension. The second questionnaire was

administered to fifteen (15) teachers of the same department. It aims at checking their

responses regarding their students’ reading comprehension difficulties, and the importance of

the contextual-guessing strategy in facilitating this skill and helping them to deal with the

vocabulary-related problems. The obtained results in this study confirm our hypothesis that

the contextual-guessing strategy facilitates the students’ reading comprehension. Therefore,

the study also proposed a number of recommendations.

Key words: Reading comprehension, vocabulary knowledge, the contextual-guessing strategy.

IV

List of Abbreviation

EFL: English as a Foreign Language.

VLS: Vocabulary Learning Strategies.

LMD: Liscence Master Doctorate.

N: Number.

%: Percentage

Q: Question.

&: and

V

List of Tables

Table 01: Students’ Level in English……………………………………...……….40

Table 02: Students’ Preference to Master Language Skills…...……..……………...41

Table 03: Students Rate of Reading in English……….….…………………….…..42

Table 04: Students’ Objectives while Reading……………………………………..43

Table 05: Students’ Objectives while reading………………………………………44

Table 06: Students’ Reasons towards their Objectives while Reading…………......45

Table 07: Students’ Opinions about Reading…………………………………..…...46

Table 08: Students’ Reasons about Reading Difficulty…………………………….47

Table 09: The Importance of Vocabulary knowledge in Reading………………….48

Comprehension

Table 10: Encountering Vocabulary Problems While Reading…………………….49

Table 11: Types of Vocabulary Problems Faced by Students while Reading……...50

Table 12: Stopping Reading due to new words. …………………………………....51

Table 13: Students’ Perceptions about Reading Comprehension…………………..53

Table 14: Strategies Used by Learners to Deal with New Words…………………..54

Table 15: The Effect of the Dictionary Use on Reading Comprehension…………..56

Table 16: The Effect of Word-Ignorance on Reading Comprehension……………..57

Table 17: Kinds of Contextual Clues Used by Students…………………………....59

Table 18: The Retention of Guessed and Given Meanings………………………....60

Table 19: The Importance of Guessing from Context Strategy in Reading ……..…61

Comprehension.

Table 20: Teachers’ Role in Encouraging Students to Use Guessing..……………..62

from Context Strategies

Table 21: Students’ opinions about Strategy-Training Instructions………….…….63

Table 22: Teachers’ Academic Held………………………………………………..66

VI

Table 23: Experience in Teaching English …………………………………………67

Table 24: Teachers' Evaluation of the Students' Learning Difficulties………….68

Table 25: Teachers’ Encouragement to their Students to Read in English……...69

Table 26: Teachers’ Evaluation of their Students' Reading Comprehension……70

Table 27: Teachers’ Opinions about the Difficulty of Reading for Students…..…..71

Table 28: Teachers’ Reasons about why is reading .……………………………...72

difficult for students

Table 29: Teachers’ Reasons about Students’ Reading Difficulty………………….73

Table 30: Teachers’ views about the importance of vocabulary knowledge ……….74

in reading comprehension.

Table 31: Teachers’ views of vocabulary problems occurrence while their………...75

students read

Table 32: Teachers’ reasons of their students vocabulary-related problems………...76

Table 33: Teachers’ views of new words’ effect on their students’ reading………...77

Comprehensions

Table 34: Teachers’ most sustained strategies to be employed by their………...…..79

students to deal with new words.

Table 35: The Effect of the Dictionary Use on Students Reading……………….….80

Comprehension.

Table 36: The Effect of the Dictionary Use on Students’ Reading Comprehension...81

Table 37: Teachers’ Opinions about the Kinds of Contextual Clues………………...82

Used by Students.

Table 38: Teachers’ Views about the Role of Guessing from Context………..…..83

Strategy in Reading Comprehension

VII

List of Figures

Figure 01: Learning Vocabulary in another Language (Nation, 2001: 27)………23

Figure 02: Word Knowledge for the Word “tangi” (Thornbury, 2002:16)………25

Figure 03: Students’ Level in English ……………………………………………40

Figure 04: Students’ Preference to Master Language Skills………………………41

Figure 05: Students Rate of Reading in English…………………………………42

Figure 06: Students’ Objectives while Reading…………………………………..43

Figure 07: Students’ Objectives while reading……………………………………44

Figure 08: Students’ Opinions about Reading…………………………………….46

Figure 09: The Importance of Vocabulary knowledge in Reading ………..……...48

Comprehension

Figure 10: Encountering Vocabulary Problems While Reading…………………..49

Figure 11: Types of Vocabulary Problems Faced by Students while Reading…....50

Figure 12: Stopping Reading due to new words. …………………………………51

Figure 13: Students’ Perceptions about Reading Comprehension…………………53

Figure 14: Strategies Used by Learners to Deal with New Words………………...55

Figure 15: The Effect of the Dictionary Use on Reading Comprehension………...56

Figure 16: The Effect of Word-Ignorance on Reading Comprehension…………...57

Figure 17: Kinds of Contextual Clues Used by Students………………………….59

Figure 18: The Retention of Guessed and Given Meanings……………………….60

Figure 19: The Importance of Guessing from Context Strategy in Reading ………61

Comprehension.

Figure 20: Teachers’ Role in Encouraging Students to Use Guessing from ……...62

Context Strategies

Figure 21: Students’ opinions about Strategy-Training Instructions………………63

VIII

Figure 22: Teachers’ Academic Held……………………………………………...66

Figure 23: Experience in Teaching English ……………………………………….67

Figure 24: Teachers' Evaluation of the Students' Learning Difficulties………..68

Figure 25: Teachers’ Encouragement of their Students to Read in English……70

Figure 26: Teachers’ Evaluation of their Students' Reading Comprehension….71

Figure 27: Teachers’ Opinions about Students’ Reading Difficulty………………72

Figure 28: Teachers’ views about the importance of vocabulary …………………73

knowledge in reading Comprehension.

Figure 29: Teachers’ views of vocabulary problems occurrence while their………74

students read

Figure 30: Teachers’ reasons of their students vocabulary-related problems……...75

Figure 31: Teachers’ views of new words’ effect on their students’ reading…….76

Comprehension

Figure 32: Teachers’ most sustained strategies to be employed by their………….78

students to deal with new words.

Figure 33: The Effect of the Dictionary Use on Students Reading……………….79

Comprehension.

Figure 34: The Effect of the Dictionary Use on Students’ Reading………….. …..80

Comprehension

Figure 35: Teachers’ Opinions about the Kinds of Contextual Clues……………..81

Used by Students.

Figure 36: Teachers’ Opinions about Guessed and Given Meanings’ Retention…83

Figure 37: Teachers’ Views about the Role of Guessing from Context……..……84

Strategy in Reading Comprehension.

IX

Table of Contents

Dedication…………………………………………………………………………….І

Acknowledgement……………………………………………………………………Π

Abstract………………………………………………………………………..……...Ш

List of Abbreviations……………………………………………………………...…..IV

List of tables………………………………………………………………….……….V

List of figures…………………………………………………………………..…….VШ

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Statement of the Problem………………………………………………..…….........1

Aim of the Study……………………………………………………………………1

Research Question………………………………………………………………....2

Research Hypothesis………………………………………………..……….…….2

Means of the Research……………………………………………………………...2

Structure of the Study………………………………………………........................2

Chapter One: Reading and Vocabulary

Introduction

Section One: Reading and Reading Comprehension

1. Definition of Reading………………………………………………………………..6

2. Models of Reading…………………………………………………………………..7

2.1. Bottom-up Model……………………………………………………………….7

2.2. Top-Down Model……………………………………………………………...…7

2.3. The Interactive Model…………………………………………………………..8

X

3. Types of Reading……………………………………………………………………9

3.1. Intensive Reading…………………………………………………………….…9

3.2. Extensive Reading……………………………………………………………….10

3.3. Scanning……………………………………………………………………...…10

3.4. Skimming ……………………………………………………………………....11

4. Reading Comprehension…………………………………………………………….11

4.1. What is Comprehension?......................................................................................11

4.2. What is Reading Comprehension?.......................................................................11

5. Schemata Theory and Reading Comprehension……………………………………..13

6. Reading Comprehension Difficulties………………………………………………..15

6.1. Word-Level Deficits…………………………………………………………….15

6.2. Sentence-Level Deficits…………………………………………………………16

6.3. Discourse-Level Deficits……;;;;………………………………………...…...…17

6.4. Cognitive Processes………………………………………………………….….18

7. Reading Comprehension Questions………………………………………………….18

Section Two: Vocabulary knowledge and Guessing from Context Strategy

1. Definition of Vocabulary………………………………………………………….…21

2. What does it Mean to Know a Word? ………………………………………………22

3. The importance of vocabulary…………………………………………………….…25

4. The Importance of Strategy-Training Instruction in EFL Classrooms………..…….26

5. Vocabulary Learning Strategies (VLS)……………………………………………..27

5.1. Word – Ignorance…………………………………………………………......…...28

5.2. Dictionary Use ………………………………………………………………….…29

5.3. Guessing from context strategy……………………………………………………29

XI

5.3.1. Definition of Guessing from context strategy ……………………………….30

5.3.2. Kinds of Contextual Clues……………………………………………...……30

6. The Importance of Using the Guessing from Context Strategy in Reading….….....33

Comprehensions

Conclusion

Chapter Two: Data Collection and Analysis

Introduction

1. Research Design and Methodology………………………………………………....36

1.1. Research Setting and Research Participants……………………………………....36

1.2. Means of Research…………………………………………………………..…….36

2. Students’ Questionnaire …………………………………………………………….36

2.1. The Pilot Questionnaire……………………………………………………………36

2.2. The Final Questionnaire………………………………………………………….37

2.2.1. Description of Students’ Questionnaire………………………………………..37

3. Teachers’ Questionnaire ……………………………………………………….…....38

3.1. The Pilot Questionnaire………………………………………………………..…38

3.2. The Final Questionnaire……………………………………………………….....39

3.3. Description of Teachers’ Questionnaire …………………………………………39

4. Data Analysis and Interpretation …………………………………………………...39

4.1. Analysis and Interpretation of Students’ Questionnaire………………………..…39

4.1. 1. Section One: Background Information…………………………………………39

4.1.2. Section Two: Reading and Reading Comprehension…………………………...41

4.1.3. Section Three: Vocabulary Learning Strategies (Context-guessing strategy)…..54

4.1.4. Section Four: Further Suggestion or Comments………………………………...64

XII

4.1.5. Discussion of the Results………………………………………………………..64

4.2. Analysis and Interpretation of Teachers’ Questionnaire…………………………..66

4.2.1. Section One: General Information………………………………………………66

4.2.2. Section Two: Teachers’ Attitudes about Reading and Reading Comprehension.67

4.2.3. Section Three: Teachers’ Attitudes about Vocabulary Learning Strategies……..77

(The Context- Guessing Strategy)

4.2.4. Section Four: Further Suggestion or Comments …………………………….…..85

5. Discussion of the Results …………………………………………………………….85

Conclusion

GENERAL CONCLUSION AND RECONNONDATIONS

List of References

APPENDICES

Résumé

ملخصال

1

Statement of the Problem

Reading is an important aspect in learning/ teaching a foreign language process for

academic studies or personal development. Learners should master two main skills to be

successful readers: They must be able to decode the individual words on the page and to

comprehend the text because word decoding and reading comprehension are correlated skills.

As a student of English for ten (10) years, I have noticed that many students face a difficulty

in comprehending the material read especially when they come across unfamiliar words. To

overcome this issue, students may resort to dictionaries, ignore about new words or adopt

other strategies like what we studied in first year in the module of methodology about using

“Contextualization” as well as “Affixation” to infer the meaning of unclear words while

reading.

However, in the case of teaching English in Algeria specifically in L'arbi Ben Mhidi

University, Oum El Bouaghui, reading has no part in its curriculum. It is often practiced via

the integrated-skill approach by many teachers who may teach it accidently in modules which

are not about reading but other issues like civilization, literature, psycho-pedagogy and others.

Meanwhile, students face difficulties in understanding different concepts and vocabulary

items to ensure a good reading comprehension of the subject matter being studied.

Therefore, the present study stems from a personal interest to see whether the

contextual-guessing strategy is important for facilitating the students’ reading comprehension

and if they are aware about its use or not.

Aim of the Study

The aim behind conducting our study is to shed light on the importance of the

contextual-guessing strategy in reading comprehension. It also aims at raising students’

awareness about the use of their cognitive capacities that make the reading task more joyful

and beneficial. On the other hand, we want to convince the responsibles of higher education to

include the reading skill in the curriculum of English in our department to raise the learners’

awareness about the importance of the reading skill as well as the possible strategies that

develop more comprehension and raise more interest especially by using the contextual

guessing strategy.

2

Research Questions and Hypotheses

The present research is based on the following question:

• Is the contextual-guessing strategy important for facilitating the students' reading

comprehension?

Therefore, we hypothesize that:

H1: the contextual-guessing strategy may facilitate the students’ reading comprehension.

H2: The contextual-guessing strategy may hinder the students’ reading comprehension.

Methodological Design

We intend to use a descriptive method in our research through two questionnaires. One

will be administered for third year LMD English students. We will choose them randomly

regardless to their ages, gender and abilities. It consists of a sample of sixty students (60)

from a population of 304 students that is a percentage of 5%. The aim behind the students'

questionnaire is to find out their opinions about reading comprehension, which strategies they

often use whenever they face new words while they read, and to see their views about the

importance of the contextual clues in facilitating their reading comprehension. The other

questionnaire is intended to be given to English teachers in the same department to figure out

their opinions about reading comprehension and if they attract the students’ attention to the

importance of certain strategies especially the contextual-guessing strategy that can be used to

facilitate reading comprehension beyond the mere use of dictionaries. The sample is fifteen

(15) teachers taken from a population of 23 Teachers.

Structure of the Study

Our study will consist of a theoretical and a practical part. The theoretical part includes

two sections. Section one will deal with reading in general, its types and models, as well as

reading comprehension, and the most reading difficulties that readers may face. While section

two will deal with the problem of vocabulary meaning that students may face while reading

and the important strategies used to learn vocabulary especially guessing from context.

Finally, the practical part will consist of one chapter that will deal with the analysis and the

interpretation of the findings and the results of both questionnaires.

3

Chapter One: Reading and Vocabulary

Introduction

Section One: Reading and Reading Comprehension

1. Definition of Reading

2. Models of Reading

2.1. Bottom-up Model

2.2. Top-Down Model

2.3. The Interactive Model

3. Types of Reading

3.1. Intensive Reading

3.2. Extensive Reading

3.3. Skimming

3.4. Scanning

4. Reading Comprehension

4.1. What is Comprehension?

4.2. What is Reading Comprehension?

5. Schemata Theory and Reading Comprehension

6. Reading Comprehension Difficulties

6.1. Word-Level Deficits

6.2. Sentence-Level Deficits

6.3. Text-Level Deficits

6.4. Cognitive Processes

7. Reading Comprehension Questions

4

Section Two: Vocabulary knowledge and Guessing from Context Strategy

1. Definition of Vocabulary

2. What does it Mean to Know a Word?

3. The importance of vocabulary

4. The Importance of Strategy-Training Instruction in EFL Classrooms

5. Vocabulary Learning Strategies (VLS)

5.1. Word – Ignorance

5.2. Dictionary Use

5.3. Guessing from context strategy

5.3.1. Definition of Guessing from context strategy

5.3.2. Kinds of Contextual Clues

6. The Effect of Using the Guessing from Context Strategy in Reading Comprehension

Conclusion

5

Introduction

Reading makes up one of the four skills of any language. It is important in learning any

subject matter and helps to get information from written texts. In other words, comprehension

is the primary intention behind reading. On the other hand, vocabulary is the spirit of any

language. Written texts convey ideas through words. That is why facing unfamiliar words

while reading may block the learners’ reading comprehension. However, mastering certain

important vocabulary learning strategies may facilitate reading comprehension. Therefore, the

literature of this research paper is a chapter divided into two main sections. The first section

tends to give an overview about reading and reading comprehension, understanding different

notions like the definition of reading, its different models, the most reading deficits that the

reader may face while reading, and some reading comprehension questions that may facilitate

reading. Whereas, the second section aims to shed light on vocabulary knowledge and its

importance in reading comprehension as well as the main vocabulary learning strategies that

learners may use when they face vocabulary problems while reading.

6

Section One: Reading and Reading Comprehension

1. Definition of Reading

Reading as one aspect of language teaching receives a potential interest of many

researchers and educators due to its importance in any language. Most of them have not fixed

one definition for this aspect because they relate this disagreement to the complexity of

reading as a process of correlated skills and strategies.

Broughton et.al (1978) consider reading as a “complex skill” which entails the recognition

of the “black marks” on the page such as sounds and punctuations, and to correlate them in

order to get words, phrases, clauses, or whole paragraphs, then to correlate them with the

meanings that those words represented. As a proof, they stated that “reading is the

understanding of the black marks on the paper”, (p.90). This leads us to deduce that

understanding the text involves understanding the meaning of each individual word of the

text.

Hudson (2007) argued that reading is a complex process that entails the use of different

strategies that facilitate it. He stated that “The reader employs numerous monitoring strategies

throughout the reading process as facilitating aids for a smooth and efficient reading activity”,

(p.9). So, good readers are those who practice these strategies while reading because strategic

reading leads to effective reading. Hudson (2007) pointed out to one strategy of reading

saying that “the reader can interpret words that have different meanings in different

sentences” (p.8). Here, the interpretation of words may help in getting the different meanings

that one word may have in different contexts.

Moreover, Goodman (as cited in Alderson, 2000, p. 17) referred to reading as a

“psycholinguistic guessing game”; guessing is a strategy that the reader uses while reading to

interpret the meaning of words on the page with the help of his cognitive ability to extract the

meaning based on the surrounding words and the context as a whole.

Additionally, Abderrahman et.al (1986) claimed that the good reader is the one who

participates actively in the reading process via using different processes: “thinking, cognition,

memory […], intelligence, synthesis, evaluation, […] etc”, (p.34) rather than just perceives

the black marks on the page (word decoding).

Finally, in her book Practical English Language Teaching, Linse (2005, p. 77) stated that

“Reading is a set of skills that involves making sense and driving meaning from printed word.

In order to read, we must be able to decode (sound out) the printed words and also

7

comprehend what we read”. So, she also sees the reading process as a set of skills which

involves not only decoding but also comprehension.

2. Models of reading

The reading models are the explanation of the reading process. These models try to show

what actually happens through reading from the starting moment of reading when the reader’s

first look at the text till the moment of reaching a gist of the whole passage/text. This is

according to Davies’s view (as cited in Skudiene, 2002, p. 2) who states that “A reading

model is theory of what is going on in the reader’s mind during reading and comprehension

(or miscomprehending) a text”. In fact, theories of reading and studies agreed upon three

models of reading: Bottom-up, top-down, and interactive models.

2.1. Bottom-up models

Bottom-up models have been defined by many researchers as an approach to reading

which considers “word decoding” as the basis step of the reading process. Ueta (2005) called

it “data-driven processing”, this means that the reader is going to pick up the information

from the reading material. In other words, bottom-up models relate to the process of decoding

and analyzing all the linguistic information of the read material starting by the smallest units

(letters and words) until building up the literal meaning of the largest units (sentences,

paragraphs and the whole text), regardless to any use of interpretation or background

knowledge. Hedge (2008) defines this approach as the activity of constructing the writer’s

original idea that s/he tends to transmit to the reader through letters and words, and once the

reader decodes all these letters s/he will succeed in understanding the intended idea of the

writer. He claimed that “The term bottom-up processing has been used to describe the

decoding of the letters, words, and the other language features in the text” (p.189).

However, this model was criticized since it focused on word recognition as a key of the

reading process and neglected the role of comprehension which is the aim of reading. In other

words, the ability of decoding words does not necessarily mean that the reader comprehends

the combination of them into words, sentences, and paragraphs which affects the whole text

comprehension. This has led to the emergence of “Top-down models”.

2.2. Top-down Models

Top-down models are referred to as the “conceptual-driving process” whereby the reader

makes use of his/her pre-existing knowledge to guess what the reading material is about

(Ueta, 2005). Thus, in top-down models the reader will make use of what s/he already knows

8

to comprehend what s/he is reading since the reader’s prior knowledge will help him/her to

predict the writer’s message beyond the literal meaning of the printed material.

Harmer (2001, p. 216) claims that “it has been said that in top-down processing the reader

[…] gets a general view of the reading […] passage by […] absorbing the overall picture.

This is greatly helped if the reader’s […] schemata allow them to have appropriate

expectations of what they are going to come across”. Thus, the basic idea behind top-down

processing is the knowledge that the reader brings to the text in order to comprehend it.

Linse (2005) pointed out that top-down processing is the fact that the reader may achieve

comprehension, which is the aim of reading; if he/she makes use of his/her background

knowledge in order to make predictions about the material. This background knowledge may

consist of different processes which Goodman (as cited in Hudson, 2007, p. 37) refers to as

“… predicting, sampling, confirming, and correcting”.

Therefore, according to top-down models, reading goes beyond word

decoding/identification to background knowledge. Top-down processing entails that the

reader starts from general to specific as if someone is looking from the top of a mountain to

one specific area in the world as a society of a given country according to his background

knowledge without knowing about each individual houses and buildings that contribute in

building up this society.

2.3. The Interactive Models

The interactive models are the result of bottom-up and top-down processing combination.

The basic idea behind this model according to most studies is that the reading process is an

interaction between the reader and the text. Sadoski (2004, p. 100) stated that “Reading

always involves two parties: The printed text and the reader”. This idea also confirms that a

reader is an active part in reading comprehension who integrates within the text to decode the

words and construct their meanings based on his prior knowledge.

Smith (as cited in Hudson, 2007: 40) asserts that “language has a surface structure, the

observable characteristics of language as it exists in print or speech, and it also has a deep

structure, the meaning that is obtained from the message”. Here, smith tends to point out that

the reader of language has to interact with the printed material to understand the author’s

message that may be implicitly stated. So the reader’s job is to read lines as well as between

lines. At the same page Hudson (2005, p. 40) concluded that “In such views of the interactive

nature of reading, priority is given to the process of sampling the text, making predictions

9

about the intended meaning, and then evaluating the message through subsequent reading”.

Thus, we may assume that the reader is an active participant who contributes in constructing

the meaning.

Harmer (2001, p.216) supports the same idea because he considers the interactive model as

a combination of bottom-up and top-down processing, and both of them are important in

comprehending the text; he stated that:

It is probably most useful to see acts of reading […] as interactions between top-down and

bottom-up processing. Sometimes it is individual details that help in understanding the

whole; sometimes it is our overview that allows us to process the details.

Therefore, the interactive models view the reading process as a combination of the written

information and previous information that the reader has in his/her long term memory like the

world knowledge and experiences that s/he goes back to in order to cope with the meaning of

the whole text and to pick up the writer’s message.

3. Types of Reading

Many researchers have agreed upon the types of reading they determined in four main

types: Intensive reading, extensive reading, skimming and scanning.

3.1. Intensive reading

This form of reading indicates that students “read to learn”. It requires from the reader a

careful attention to understand the text or the passage to learn something about language. It is

the type of reading that students do in classrooms with their textbooks under the teacher’s

guidance. (Uden, 2013)

Intensive reading is more concentrated and careful since the reader has to concentrate and

open his/her mind to understand the details and to learn from the material that is being read.

In his distinction between “extensive” and “intensive” reading, Harmer (2001, p. 204) noticed

that “intensive reading […] tends to be more concentrated, less relaxed, and often dedicated

not so much to pleasure as to the achievement of a study goal”. Thus, intensive reading is not

to read for pleasure or to enjoy your time out of the classroom, rather it is to read inside the

classroom to learn something that the reader needs in his/her educational purposes.

Some examples of intensive reading are to teach students grammatical forms, cohesive ties,

and other structures of language that should be taught in details inside the classroom. A

careful reading with the help of the teacher is needed because students cannot grasp these

10

items alone (Ueta, 2005). Hedge (2000) gave more examples of this type of reading; he

claimed that “intensive reading involves looking carefully at a text, as a student of literature

would look at a poem to appreciate the choice of words, or as a solicitor would study the

precise wordy of legal document”, (p. 195). Therefore, these examples show some ways of

using intensive reading.

3.2. Extensive Reading

Unlike intensive reading, extensive reading means to read quickly, easily without an

intention to learn something from it. It occurs when students read because they just want “to

learn to read” or to read for pleasure. Its aim is to help readers improve their reading “speed”

and “fluency”. (Uden, 2013)

However, to read quickly and fluently, the reader has better to choose easy materials

without too much unknown words on the page because this will slow the reading rate as well

as its fluency. So, teachers may provide students with lists of simplified passages and books

to encourage them to read a lot taking into consideration their interests because students

cannot enjoy reading something out of their interest. In this respect, Harmer (2001, p. 211)

emphasized the teacher’s role in encouraging students for extensive reading by claiming that

“most students will not do a lot of extensive reading by themselves unless they are

encouraged to do so by their teachers”. So, it is important to encourage students to read

extensively to develop their vocabulary repertoire and gain more knowledge about the target

language.

3.3. Scanning

It is a quick reading instead of reading carefully and very slowly. Readers may scan a text

to find out given information which helps them to be efficient readers. It helps the reader to

gain more time to decide whether the text is relevant to his purpose or not instead of wasting

hours turning pages and moving eyes through the whole book reading it word by word and

sentence by sentence. Once the reader finds out his required information, he may stop and

read the entire sentence or paragraph carefully. Jeffries & Mikulecky (1996, p. 22) stated

that “scanning is a very high-speed reading. When you scan, you have a question in mind.

You do not read every word, only the words that answer your question. Practice in scanning

will help you learn to skip over unimportant words so that you can read faster”. She added

that one can scan the phone list to look for a specific name or number, or to scan the table of

content of a book to see whether it contains the information you are searching for or not .

Moreover, Hedge (2000, p. 195) stated that “scanning involves searching rapidly through a

11

text to find a specific point of information, for example, the relevant times on a timetable,

items in a directory, or key points in an academic text”. Here, he illustrated his point of view

by giving more examples to show when the reader may adopt scanning to get a given

information.

3.4. Skimming

Skimming refers to the activity of getting a general idea about the whole text. Jeffries and

Mikuleckey (1996, p. 139) said that “skimming is high-speed reading that can save you lots of

time. You skim to get the general sense of a passage or a book.” Thus, to skim means that the

reader is interested about the main idea of the material. And to make the skim reading activity

easy, it is better that the reader first sets objectives before starting reading because it is

unreasonable to start reading looking for nothing. Also, reading titles, the introductory

paragraphs, and the topic sentence of each paragraph may give the reader a hint about the

general ideas of the text. After skimming and knowing the main idea, the reader here will be

able to decide if it fits his purpose or not. Examples of skimming are newspapers and

magazines; Hedge (2000) gave more examples to illustrate what skimming is, “Skim reading

is used to get a global impression of the content of a text. An example would be previewing a

long magazine article by reading rapidly, skipping large chunks of information, and focusing

on headings and first lines of paragraphs” (p. 195).

4. Reading Comprehension

4.1. What is Comprehension?

For many researchers, the term “comprehension” means “understanding”. For example,

Smith (2008) refers to the word “understanding” as a synonym of comprehension that may

come in every one’s mind in daily life once you ask him about comprehension meaning;

however, he preferred more the term of “making sense” instead of understanding since it is

related to our real world in which the human’s nature requires making sense of everything

around us including reading. Smith (2008, p. 13) stated that “[…] comprehension is a kind of

up-market synonym for understanding in discussions that are technical and scientific”. So,

comprehension is more formal and academic than “understanding”.

4.2. What is Reading Comprehension?

The unchangeable definition that whenever we try to understand what does reading

comprehension means is that “comprehension is the aim of reading”. So, to read a text means

to understand it since comprehension refers to making sense and understanding which in turn

12

means to get the meaning of something. Therefore, reading comprehension is the process of

understanding the meaning of the read material.

However, it is agreed upon that reading comprehension is not just a matter of word

recognition. For, Snow et al. (2002, p. 11) it is a process of “extracting and constructing

meaning through interaction with written language”. This entails that reading comprehension

requires the integration of the reader with the text information to extract the meaning.

Abderrahman et.al (1986, p. 33) also sees that reading comprehension “requires more than

the understanding of individual sentences, rather it involves an integration of the whole

contextual clues to build up an overall understanding of the text”. In other words, the process

of word decoding does not necessarily mean that the reader has understood what he has read;

the same if he succeeded in pronouncing words accurately does not mean that the reader gets

what they mean in their given context. This is supported by Flynn and Stainthorp (2006, p.

43) who pointed out that “of course, accurate translation is not enough. It is possible for many

adults to read every word […] but not to be able to understand what they have read”.

In fact, reading comprehension requires different skills that help the reader to ensure that

he really grasped the meaning of the written material. Since reading comprehension is a

mental process, this indicates that the reader has to activate his/her cognitive ability and adopt

different skills and strategies like problem-solving strategy in which he interacts with the text

to answer questions in his mind. This may be considered as a dialogue between the reader and

the text.

Nation (2005, p. 248) stated that “All models of comprehension recognize the need for

readers to build up a mental representation of the text, a process that requires integration

across a range of information, from lexical features […] to knowledge concerning events in

the world”. Here, there is a clear emphasis on the interaction between the reader and the text

as well as the reader’s overview about the world in which the reader will relate new things

with what he already knows to get the intended meaning of the text.

Similarly, McNamara (2007) tries to draw the attention to the importance of

comprehension skills because, according to him, it is wrong to say that one can reach

comprehension once he can recognize letters, pronounce them accurately, or even understand

many sentences, but in fact reading comprehension requires more skills; he named some of

them: “inferences, linking ideas coherently, scrutinizing the validity of claims with a critical

stance, and sometimes understanding the motives of authors”. (p. 4)

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From the above findings, we may deduce that reading comprehension is not a matter of

word decoding; rather it is a set of interrelated skills that the reader should develop and use

effectively to get the writer’s ideas.

5- Schemata Theory and Reading Comprehension

Schemata theory was first proposed in Berellet study (as cited in Kashavarz et.al, 2007) in

which he asked people to retell a story after they read it, but their repetitions were inaccurate;

they replaced some original events by others from their native culture and their past

experiences. Schema which is a singular of schemata has been defined by many as

“background knowledge”. Cook (as cited in Hedge, 1989, p. 190) refers to schemata as a

cognitive ability to access the meaning of the text via prediction; he says that “… [It is] a

mental representation of typical situations… used in discourse processing to predict the

contents of the particular situation which the discourse describes”. Smith (2008) defined it as

the pre-existing knowledge that facilitates the process of comprehension. For him, it is

important for the reader to relate new things with their prior-knowledge, he stated that “we

learn to read, and we learn through reading, by elaborating what we know already”

(Smith, 2008, p. 14). Thus, readers may understand new things when they activate their

schemata. Moreover, Harmer (2001, p. 214) argued that “understanding a piece of discourse

involves much more than just knowing the language”. This may show that whenever the

reader gets across new statements and situations; s/he does not need the language knowledge

only rather s/he needs to relate these new things with his/her previously stored experiences

and situations.

It was assumed that people’s schemata help them to interpret the meaning of new things

quickly since they rely on their pre-existing knowledge (Hall, 1997). Harmer (2001, p. 215)

stressed this idea saying that “When we see a written text our schematic knowledge may first

tell us what kind of text genre we are dealing with”. Thus, prior-knowledge about the text

type whether it is scientific, business, or historical may help the reader to predict what will

come in the details.

5.5. Examples of Schematic Knowledge

In fact, our daily life is full of situations and examples of activating our schemata which

improve its importance. One example of how a person may activate his schema is when the

door is knocked; he may guess what would be behind the door according to his experience.

The same may happen when you tell somebody you will go to the restaurant since it is

obvious according to his background knowledge about the world that any restaurant consists

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of tables, chairs, meals, and people not beds or cars. However, schematic knowledge may

differ from one culture to another, for instance with the same example of the restaurant, we as

Muslims our schema will reject the presence of alcohol inside restaurants while for others it

may be an essential element in any restaurant (Hall, 1997). Thus, having different cultural

background may affect comprehension.

Relating this with educational settings, we may assume that one way to activate students’

schemata is through asking them what they already know about the topic before they start

reading it. This step can be done under the activity of ‘warming-up’ (Yin, n.d.), whereby

students will easily integrate with the topic. So, being familiar with the topic may raise their

engagement especially if their prior knowledge about the topic of the text is activated which

means that they will experience more comprehension.

5.2. Types of Schematic Knowledge

Many researchers believe that schematic knowledge has a facilitative role in reading

comprehension and that there are two kinds of schemata: Content schemata which are related

to the text topic and cultural knowledge, and formal schemata which are related to language

knowledge (Hudson, 2007; Hedge, 2008). Content schema is the cultural knowledge that

facilitates reading comprehension. Anderson and Pearson (as cited in Hudson, 2007)

acknowledged the effect of content and cultural knowledge on text comprehension as it is

demonstrated below:

Reading does not consist merely of decoding the written word of language; rather it is

preceded by and intertwined with knowledge of the world. Language and reality are

dynamically interconnected. The understanding attained by critical reading of a text

implies perceiving the relationship between text and content. (p.142)

That is to say, knowledge about the world will help in understanding the topic of the text

by raising comprehension. Hudson (2007, p. 161) concluded that “familiarity with the topic of

a text is essential for readers in […] second language to understand […] a writer’s message”.

On the other hand, formal schema refers to linguistic knowledge and knowledge of

language that the reader has. For both Hudson (2007) and Hedge (2008), this type of schema

includes the knowledge that the reader previously acquired about the text structure, its

cohesive ties, and rhetorical organization. Therefore, it is important for the reader to have

knowledge about language competency that contains different aspects of the written text

15

before he intends to read. This is clearly stated in Hudson’s (2007, p. 199) conclusion when

he said that “it is clear that the more mastery the reader has, the better he or she will be”.

As a conclusion, both types are important in comprehending the text. However, Hedge

(2008) gave priority to formal schemata than content schemata because it is important for the

reader to acquire the linguistic background knowledge of the written language before making

use of cultural knowledge. Here, he points out that it is impossible for anyone to start reading

without any knowledge about the target language. For instance, it is impossible for an

Algerian as a foreign language reader who has no idea about text coherence, and has never

been taught text structure and its rhetorical organization to understand an English passage

even if its title is “Algerian independence”.

6. Reading Comprehension Difficulties

From the previous definitions of the reading process which emphasized strongly on the

nature of reading as a complex process; we may conclude that this complexity may result in

difficulties that readers may face. Cain & Oakhill (2003) argued that since reading

comprehension entails making sense of different aspects of the text, difficulty may appear at

the text-level including: word-, sentence-, and discourse-level difficulties as well as other

difficulties such as the reader’s cognitive abilities.

6.1. Word-Level Deficits

Cain and Oakhill (2003) have summarized the main difficulties that the reader may face at

the word-level into three main points: speed and automaticity of decoding, phonological

skills, and vocabulary and semantic knowledge.

6.1.1. Speed and automaticity of decoding

Perfetti and Mikulecky (as cited in Cain and Oakhill, 2003) assumed that slow and

inaccurate reading of words may result in comprehension difficulties. Speed reading means

automaticity in decoding letters, thus disability to do such task slows the reading rate which

affects reading comprehension. Ricketts et.al (as cited in Westwood, 2008, p. 18) argued that

“weak readers at any age are not skilled at rapid word recognition […] they have problems

identifying words with irregular patterns”. Thus, slow and inaccurate reading results in word

decoding problems; this shows that the reader is not fluent in his reading which affects his/her

comprehension. This is strongly revealed by Burn et.al (as cited in Westwood, 2008, p. 16)

who stated that:

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For a child to read fluently, he or she must recognize words at a glance, and use the

conventions of letter–sound correspondences automatically. Without these word

recognition skills, children will never be able to read or understand text comfortably and

competently.

This means that poor comprehenders with word recognition automaticity problems will not

develop their reading comprehension since they will focus on word decoding, read the text

letter-by-letter and forget about the meaning of these words as well as the meaning of the

whole text.

6.1.2. Phonological skills

This aspect of text-level is related to the word development (Cain and Oakhill, 2003) in

which the reader has the ability to identify the phonemic elements of words. Thus, readers

having disability to recognize the phonemes will find it difficult to understand words which

contribute in building up the text comprehension (Westwood, 2008). Hulme and Snowling (as

cited in Cain and Oakhill, 2003) have found that children with dyslexia, a disorder involving

difficulty in learning to read or interpret words; letters; and other symbols (Concise Oxford

Dictionary), commonly experience difficulties with the phonological representations of

words. So, phonological skills deficits have been proved to reduce the reader’s ability to

maintain verbal information in working memory which, in turn, is the reason of poor

comprehension, (Cain and Oakhill, 2008).

6.1.3. Vocabulary and Semantic Knowledge

Vocabulary knowledge is a crucial aspect in understanding the read material. Cain and

Oakhill (ibid) claim that readers with rich vocabulary knowledge are good comprehenders

while they are reading a given text. It is meant by semantic knowledge the meaning of words,

phrases, sentences, or the text that the reader has about a given language (Concise Oxford

English Dictionary eleventh edition, 2011). They concluded that “we suggest that limited

semantic knowledge may be related to comprehension difficulties […]”, (Cain and Oakhill,

2003, p. 317). Therefore, lack of vocabulary knowledge results in reading comprehension

difficulties.

6.2. Sentence-Level Deficits

After the reader succeeds in decoding the words, he or she will be able to identify their

meanings. Later, s/he has to pass to the level of the sentences in which certain knowledge

about sentence structure is required. Thus, syntactic knowledge at the sentence-level is

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important in reading comprehension. The syntactic knowledge involves the reader’s ability to

identify the elements of the sentence such as the subject, verb, and object, and the relationship

between one another because, as stated by Cain and Oakhill (2003), it is important for the

reader to detect “who did what to whom” (p. 318). That is to say, some basic grammatical

knowledge is important in comprehending the read material. This was proved by Bowey;

Tunmer & Bowey (as cited in Cain & Oakhill, 2003:318) who stated that “It has been

suggested that grammatical knowledge may facilitate the detection and correction of reading

errors, thereby enhancing comprehension monitoring”. Therefore, to facilitate reading

comprehension, the reader is better to master an adequate syntactic knowledge to identify the

different elements of the sentence that facilitates its understanding.

6.3. Discourse-Level Deficits

The major reading comprehension difficulties that the reader may face at the text-level are

mostly found at discourse-level skills. These skills according to Cain and Oakhill (2003) are:

making inferences, the use of discourse-level context, and metacognitive knowledge and

processes.

Making inferences is a valuable component skill of reading comprehension. The reader has

to use her/his general knowledge to make links between all parts of the text since the author’s

message may be stated implicitly. So, inability in making inferences will result in

comprehension difficulties. Early work by Oakhill (cited in Cain and Oakhill, 2003: 320)

resulted in “less skilled comprehenders are poor at making inferences when reading …”, the

anaphoric processing is one example of inferences making deficits that less skilled

comprehenders will face when they come to supply the correct anaphors in the text. This

means that anaphoric difficulties will affect the reader’s ability to build up a coherent and

meaningful representation of the text (Cain and Oakhill, 2003).

In addition, using context at text-level is very important for readers to comprehend any

type of text. Many studies have investigated its efficiency; Cain and Oakhill’s study (2003)

found that:

Less skilled comprehenders experience particular difficulty with the use of story context to

facilitate understanding of unknown words and phrases in text. This higher-level process

may be an important mechanism for acquiring information from context in everyday

reading and, thus, impairment in the use of context may affect vocabulary growth. (p.324)

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Moreover, metacognition knowledge deficits may affect reading comprehension. Kurtz (as

cited in Cain & Oakhill, 2003, p. 324) defines metacognition as “knowledge about and

regulation of cognitive states and processes.” Thus, readers must know about the purpose

behind their reading as well as they must have the ability to use effective processes to regulate

their readings. Consequently, readers having difficulty in regulating their knowledge while

reading will experience comprehension difficulties, (Cain and Oakhill, 2003).

6.4. Reader’s Cognitive Processes

This difficulty is related to the reader himself instead of the text-level. Most readers may

have a difficulty in holding up information which may be considered as another reading

comprehension deficit. That is, less skilled readers lack the ability to store and process

information while they read a text (Cain and Oakhill, 2003). In other words, we, as readers,

may experience this difficulty when we read a piece of information and quickly loose and

forget it as far as we move to the next information which makes us each time go back to the

lost information and reread it trying to make a link between all the information we have

passed through. This was viewed by both Cain and Oakhill (2003) who claimed that the way

of reaching comprehension could be impossible if the reader’s ability to store information is

weak and slow. This ability was proved to be correlated with intelligence since more

intelligent readers will find it easy to understand information and store them, (Cain and

Oakhill, 2003).

7. Reading Comprehension Questions

Reading comprehension requires deep interaction from the reader with the text to get the

writer’s intended meaning rather than its literal meaning. One way to activate students’

cognitive processes to understand the messages is through comprehension questions

(Broughton et al., 2003; Day & Park, 2005). Teachers may make use of different types of

effective questions to involve students in the text to comprehend it and to check up their

understanding because comprehension is a matter of answering questions in the mind of each

reader. Once all questions are answered, comprehension is accomplished and students will be

able to grasp the meaning and can easily recall the key events in the text. However, when

teachers tend to raise questions, it is better to allow students to use the texts without asking

them to close their books. Because the aim behind questions of comprehension as was stated

by Day and Park (2005) is to help students to understand the written words on the page not to

assess them.

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Broughton et.al (2003) argued that questions have to cover many aspects of the text to get

the different relationships between words, grammatical structures, logical and rhetorical

elements, and between the author, the reader, and the text. This may be considered as a

synthesis and analysis of the text that needs deep focus and attention from the reader as well

as more intelligence from the teacher who designs the questions. The teacher should take into

account whether the questions are easy or difficult for students as it is better to start from

general and easy questions then move on to deep and more specific ones which require more

skills from the reader to answer them. In fact, there are different types of questions that can be

used to comprehend the text:

7.1. Yes/No Questions

This type of questions is the easiest and the general type of questions in which the reader

just needs to answer with “yes” or “no” (Day and Park, opt.cit). Also, Broughton et.al (opt.cit)

stated that there are different patterns of questions structures that require yes/no response: a)

general questions starting with “did/does…?” or “is/are…?”, b) questions that have the word

order of declarative statements with rising intonation like to say “the policeman find the

thieves↑?”, c) “tag questions” that also need this type of answer e.g. “it was an amazing story,

isn’t it?”.

7.2. Alternative questions

Alternative questions are questions containing an alternative option preceded by ‘or’ which

helps the reader to choose between two things. According to Broughton et.al (2003) the

response of this type of questions may be in one word or short phrase. One example may be

when the teacher asks “Is the author talking about adolescents or children?” However,

according to Day & Park (2005), it is better to follow this type of questions by what they

called “follow-ups” to make students clarify their choices to involve them more in the text in

order to guarantee their comprehension, and this may be happen by adding “why” or “clarify”

after the alternative questions.

7.3. False/True Questions

In this kind of questions, the teacher may give students false statements with other correct

ones and ask students to check up in the text to see whether each statement is true or false.

Day and Park (2005) claimed that teachers have to be careful in putting down true or false

statements so that students will not be misled. They quote that “the false answers must be

carefully designed so as to exploit potential misunderstanding of the text” (p.7).

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7.4. Wh-Questions

This type is the abbreviation of all the questions that start with “wh-”; they are: who, what,

where, when, why and how. Broughton et.al (2003) stated that the answer of these questions

may occur in one word, short phrase, clause or sentence like to say “when was the

independence of Algeria?” the answer is “in 1962” or to say “why did the author…?” which

needs a personal explanations and interpretation that may take more than one sentence. This

type of questions is more effective since it moves from general to specific information in the

text that requires more focus from the reader to answer them correctly which rises their

comprehension of the text.

7.5. Multiple Choice Questions

This last type is mostly known by its abbreviation ‘MCQ’ (Broughton et.al, 2003). Here,

this kind of questions start with a statement or wh-questions followed by different choices that

one of them or more are the correct answer of this question and students need to choose them

in relation to the text of course. Broughton also claimed that the answer of these questions is

non-linguistic since students will tick or circle the correct options.

Therefore, well designed questions help readers to be good comprehenders as they develop

the students’ reading comprehension strategies by shifting from one strategy to another

according to the type of question raised. Broughton et.al (2003) claimed that “It must be very

clearly understood that the purpose of framing these questions is not to find out how much of

the particular text in question the reader has understood but to help him to develop strategies

by means of which he may better be able to understand other texts” (p.106).

However, the overuse of comprehension questions may make students bored since they

will find themselves obliged to answer a huge number of questions on one text (Day and Park,

2005). So, teachers have to be intelligent to involve students in this activity of interaction

with the text through questions by giving for instance students an opportunity to ask questions

by themselves that even the teacher does not know their answers (Broughton et.al, 2003).

This will raise the rate of discussion in the classroom which helps all the students to interact

and share their opinions to comprehend the text under a motivational environment.

To sum up, teachers are recommended to make use of all these types of questions to ensure

a better comprehension of the read text by emphasizing not only the meaning of vocabulary

items but also by raising their critical thinking.

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Section Two: Vocabulary knowledge and Guessing from Context Strategy

1. Definition of Vocabulary

Vocabulary is considered as a crucial and important element in language teaching. This

attracts the attention of many experts and researchers of language who tried to give a clear

definition of what vocabulary is.

The Concise Oxford English Dictionary eleventh edition (2011) defines vocabulary as “the

body of words used in a particular language or in a particular sphere of activity” as it is “the

body of words known to an individual person”. On the other hand, Oxford Advanced

Learners’ Dictionary (2000) defines the term vocabulary as: 1) “All the words that a person

knows or uses; 2) All the words in a particular language; 3) The words that people use when

they are talking about a particular subject; 4) A list of words with their meaning, especially in

a book for learning a foreign language” (p. 1447). Moreover, Collins Cobuild English

Language Dictionary (as cited in Campillo, n.d, p. 35) stated that “the vocabulary of a

language is the total number of words in it” and “someone’s vocabulary is the total number of

words in a language that he or she knows”. This shows that vocabulary knowledge is the

repertoire of words that somebody has.

Moreover, Richard and Smith (2002, p. 580) defined vocabulary as a “set of lexemes

including single words, compound words and idioms”. Lexeme according to Smith (2000, p.

2) is “an item that functions as a meaning unit, regardless of the number of words it contains”.

He illustrated this idea through a list of items considered as synonyms of the word “to die”.

These items are: “Die, expire, pass away, bite the dust, kick the bucket, and give up the

ghost”. He argued that even if all these items are composed of different forms, they still

represent one meaning which is “to die”. For him, the first two items are single words (die

and expire) , “pass away” is a phrasal verb while the last three items are idioms that are a

chain of words carrying as a whole a specific meaning that is different from the meaning of

each word in isolation. Therefore, we may assume that the word is the basic element in

vocabulary.

However, other researchers have defined vocabulary in a different way beyond the word-

level. Most of them agreed that vocabulary is not just a list of words. So, it is rather the

knowledge of the meaning and pronunciation of words we use while speaking, listening,

reading or writing. Tankersley (2003, p. 68) defined vocabulary as “The meaning and

pronunciation of words that we use in communication. It is simply the number of words we

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understand or can actively use to listen, speak, read, or write. Each person has four different

vocabularies: listening, speaking, reading and writing.”

Kamil and Heibert (2005, p. 3) claimed that word knowledge may be of two kinds:

Receptive (R) and Productive (P). They stated that “productive vocabulary is the set of words

which the individual can use when writing or speaking … conversely, receptive, or

recognition vocabulary is the set of words for which an individual can assign meanings when

listening and reading”. On one hand, receptive knowledge, also called passive knowledge,

means the words that learners may recognize when they read or listen without the ability to

produce or use them in their writing or speaking skills. Unlike receptive vocabulary,

productive, or active vocabulary refers to the words that students may use when they write or

speak. They rightly stated that receptive vocabulary is larger than productive vocabulary

because we read and listen to new words a lot, and only those words that we understand and

master their meanings are used in our writings and speech.

To sum up, vocabulary has been defined in different terms but with one major item, that is

the “word” whether it is a single one, included in a sentence or dealt with from semantic,

phonological or grammatical angles.

2. What does it Mean to Know a Word?

Knowing a word involves knowing several aspects of it instead of just knowing its

pronunciation and spelling (Nation, 2001). He specifies three basic aspects of word

knowledge including: form, meaning and use.

By word-formation, Nation (2001) refers to the word knowledge as to know its spelling

form and pronunciation (what does the word look and sound like?) as well as knowing its

parts (stem, suffixes and prefixes that a given word is composed of. For instance, the word

unmotivated is composed of the root motivate which is a verb, the prefix-un which means the

opposite of the word, and the suffix-ed which shows that the verb is in the simple past. The

word meaning, however, involves how the form and the meaning of a given word can refer to

a given concept and which other words may be associated with or replace it.

Finally, word-use refers to the grammatical functions, its collocations (the other words that

could occur with a given word), and the constraints of the word-use as its frequency, register

and appropriateness…

Moreover, Nation (2001) has related word knowledge to both receptive and productive

knowledge. Receptive knowledge (R) is to get the word information, while productive

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knowledge (P) is to produce the word and use it correctly. He has given a clear description of

word knowledge as it is mentioned in the following table:

• Form

Spoken

R What does the word sound like?

P How is the word pronounced?

Written

R What does the word look like?

P How is the word written and spelled?

R What parts are recognizable in this meaning?

Word Parts P What word parts are needed to express this meaning?

• Meaning

Form and

Meaning

R What meaning does this word form signal?

P What word form can be used to express this meaning?

Concepts and

referents

R What is included in the concept?

P What items can the concept refer to?

Association R What other words does this make us think of?

P What other words could we use instead of this one?

• Use

Grammatical

Functions

R In what patterns does the word occur?

P In what patterns must we use this word?

Collocation

R What words or types of words occur with this one?

P What words or types of words must we use with this one?

Constraints

(register,

frequency…)

R Where, when, and how often would we expect on use to meet this

word?

P Where, when, and how can we use this word?

Figure 01: Learning Vocabulary in another Language (Nation, 2001, p. 27).

24

Thornbury (2002, p. 15) gave an example to illustrate what does it mean to know a word.

He showed that when we see the Maori word “tangi”, we cannot claim that we have

understood its meaning since the written form tells us nothing about its meaning. Even if we

may hypothesize that it means “sound”, but which sound exactly: the noun, the verb ‘to

sound’ or both. Thus knowing the grammatical function of the word may help in getting its

meaning.

Actually, “tangi” has other meanings in addition to “sound”. It also means “lamentation,

dirge and to weep”. He continued saying that “waiata tangi” (funeral lament) is a fundamental

part of the “tangihanga”, or the Maori funeral ceremony, that tangi means (colloquially)

“funeral”, but not a Western funeral. So, tangi means a specific kind of ceremony. Here, it

may be assumed that knowing a word requires knowing its context including the words

associated with it, its connotations as well as its register and cultural accretions rather than

knowing only the dictionary meaning.

However, for Thornbury (2002), if we succeeded in getting the meaning of the word

“tangi” on the basis of the previous information, we have just got the receptive knowledge of

it. Since we still feel uncomfortable once we try to use or produce it in our speech or writing

which is the productive knowledge that is important in word knowledge. Therefore, even

though the receptive knowledge is important in knowing a word, it is not enough; there should

be some productive knowledge.

25

The following diagram shows the word knowledge for “tangi”:

Figure 02: Word Knowledge for the Word “tangi” (Thornbury, 2002, p. 16).

But, it is impossible to cope with all of this information about the word ‘tangi’ because, as

it was viewed by Thornbury (2002), even the proficient speakers of Maori may not know all

these aspects of this word. He quotes that “word knowledge is incremental and takes time”

(p.16).

3. The importance of vocabulary

Vocabulary has been proved to be a basic component of language. It is argued that “words

are the basic building blocks of language, the units of meaning from which larger structures

such as sentences, paragraphs, and whole texts are formed” (Read, 2000, p. 1). This shows the

importance of vocabulary knowledge, since no one can learn a language without knowing the

words of this language. Mothe (n.d, p. 377) quotes that “vocabulary of a language is just like

bricks for constructing a building. Like bricks, they are vital for the building of a language.

Language is made up of words. If we want to use language effectively, we must have good

stock of vocabulary”.

tangi

the written form : tangi

the meanings: sound,

weep, mourn,

lamentation. Has come to mean funeral. Also,

chimes, birdsong

the word's frequency: tangi is a high frequency ord in Maori, as well as being used in NZ English

the connotations (or association) of the word:

tangi has strong association with traditional Maori

culture, evoking the rituals of the marae (community

area)

the register of the word-spoken and written; used

colloquially to mean funeral; now commonly used in New

Zealand English too

the collocations of the word: e.g. waiata tangi (funeral song);

tangireka (sweet sund: harmonious)

the word's derivations:tangihanga (noun), tangiia

(passiveform)

the grammatical behavior: e.g. it's

used as both a noun and a verb; it can be

used passively

the spoken form /tæŋgi/

26

Many experts of language teaching and learning put a great emphasis on the need for

vocabulary knowledge to communicate. Thornbury (2002, p. 13) said that “if you spend most

of your time studying grammar, your English will not improve very much. You will see most

improvement if you learn more words and expressions. You can say very little with grammar,

but you can say almost anything with words!”. Sharing the same idea, McCarthy (1990: i)

pointed out that “No matter how well the student learns grammar, no matter how successfully

the sounds of L2 are mastered, without words to express a wide range of meanings,

communication in an L2 cannot happen in any meaningful way”. Allen (1983, p. 5) also

emphasized the importance of vocabulary in communication; he claimed that “lexical

problems frequently interfere with communication; communication breaks down when people

do not use the right words”. That is, vocabulary is very important to communicate effectively

and to express one’s opinions and ideas.

Moreover, vocabulary is needed in the four skills of language: Listening, speaking, reading

and writing. Taking reading as an example, we as students cannot comprehend any read

passage when we lack vocabulary knowledge. This is clearly stated by Alderson (2000, p.

35) who claimed that “Having the struggle with reading because unknown words will

obviously affect comprehension and take pleasure out of reading”. Thus, vocabulary

knowledge is an important factor that facilitates reading comprehension and shortage of it

inhibits reading comprehension.

4. The Importance of Strategy-Training Instruction in EFL Classrooms

Strategies are defined as specific actions taken by learners to facilitate their learning

process. Using certain strategies while reading is an effective way to facilitate reading

comprehension. More proficient readers and less proficient readers were distinguished

according to the frequency of the strategies they use. For instance, more proficient readers use

certain strategies like: Elaborating, guessing, inferencing, and conclusion drawing … more

frequent than less proficient readers (Cain and Oakhill, 2003).

Accordingly, teaching EFL learners to use while learning strategies should be among the

first plans of instructors in order to promote pedagogically more successful reading

comprehension. Strategy-training is defined as “teaching explicitly how, when, and why to

apply language learning and language use strategies to enhance students’ efforts to reach

language program goals” (Carrell; Cohen; Ellis & Sinclair, as cited in Chen, 2005, p. 4).

Strategy- training may be taught through direct instructions or embedded instructions. The

first type of instruction aims at teaching students explicitly and clearly the target strategies to

27

increase their knowledge about when, how, and why they have to use them. Whereas the

second type, it also called blind instruction, aims at involving students to practice certain

strategies through activities and tasks implicitly. However, the combination of both types is

the best strategy-training instruction.

In fact, learners may face various difficulties and barriers that may affect their goals’

achievements. In his study, Chen (2005, p. 7) found that learners experienced several major

categories of obstacles when they were trained to learn certain listening strategies. ‘Strategic

barriers’ were among these categories. Learners were found to: forget to activate strategies

while listening, regard strategies as extra burdens to information processing (they found it

difficult to process both language input and strategy utilization at the same time), to be

challenged by the complex nature of the strategy, have problems conducting the proper

strategies, and be still unable to comprehend the text after applying strategies.

Consequently, instructors should diagnose their students’ difficulties to help them to

overcome these obstacles. Their role is very significant in raising students’ awareness,

consciousness, and motivation towards the importance of strategy use in an attempt to make

their learning more strategic, effective, easy, and purposeful.

5. Vocabulary Learning Strategies (VLS)

Vocabulary learning acquisition is regarded as an important aspect of language learning

(Nation, 1990; Allen, 1983). In fact, learning vocabulary in the past decades was based on

teaching lists of words in isolation, in other words; it was a matter of word memorization with

the intention to enlarge students’ repertoire. Strategies for teaching vocabulary were not

developed as in the case of grammar. That is why, Tassana- ngam (2004, p. 2) quotes that:

“Grammar still receives a lot more emphasis over vocabulary. Vocabulary is not directly

taught properly in class. No VLS are explicitly introduced in class. The learners are asked to

memorize the vocabulary in isolation”. Therefore, ‘VLS’ refers to the different vocabulary

learning strategies that learners may be trained to use to develop their vocabulary knowledge

or to deal with vocabulary-related problems.

Therefore, many experts tried to find out different ways that may facilitate the vocabulary

acquisition for learners. They shed light on the importance of different strategies that both

teachers and learners have to use to teach and learn new vocabulary. Nation (1990, p. 159)

suggested that it is better for teachers to help students use various strategies in order to learn

new vocabulary rather than spending most time teaching them the individual words in

isolation. He rightly claimed that “It is clear that if a teacher wants to help learners cope with

28

low frequency vocabulary, particularly in their reading, it is far better to spend time on

strategies that the learners can use to deal with these words than to spend time on individual

words”. He focused strongly on the strategies that learners can use by themselves and the

importance of helping students to master them till they can use them without the teacher’s or

others’ interference. He clearly stated that:

Strategies which learners can use independently of a teacher are the most important of all

ways of learning vocabulary. For this reason it is worthwhile ensuring that learners are able

to apply the strategies and that they get plenty of help and encouragement in doing so. By

mastering a few strategies learners can cope with thousands of words. (p. 174)

Since vocabulary is a vital component in reading comprehension, students need to make

use of different vocabulary strategies to attack the new words that may block their reading

comprehension. Read (2002, p. 53) acknowledged that “…The primary focus of the learner is

on understanding spoken or written discourse but […] there are inevitably unfamiliar lexical

items, some of which may be crucial for adequate comprehension, and the learner should have

ways of finding out what they mean”. Certain vocabulary learning strategies were proposed to

be effective while reading to deal with unknown words. These strategies are: Word-

ignorance, dictionary use, and contextual-guessing strategy.

5.1. Word - Ignorance

This strategy of ignoring words is a useful strategy when there are new words in the text or

they are unimportant. Hosenfend (as cited in Alderson, 2000, p. 10) argued that “Skip words

that may add relatively little to total meaning”. Since the text may consist of new words that

add nothing to the meaning of the text, the learner may just skip them. Nation (1990, p. 133)

pointed out that “It is often recommended that learners should be encouraged not to look up or

puzzle over every unknown word that they meet in a reading text”. This will help learners to

gain time when they read since they will not look for the meaning of each unknown word.

However, most researchers considered it a negative strategy because readers will make no

efforts to try to understand the new words they come across.

Therefore, word ignorance is one of the strategies that learners may use when they come

across new words in their reading skill, however; it is not always a useful strategy since it

may affect reading comprehension. So, the reader should not skip all of the unknown words

because some of them are important in determining the meaning of the whole text.

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5.2. Dictionary Use

Checking up the dictionary to understand the meaning of the unfamiliar words is a useful

strategy. Generally, students use the dictionary when they face unknown words either to

discover their spelling form or meaning. Bejoint (1981), and MacFarquhar and Richards

(1983) Stated that “dictionaries are used primarily to check meaning. The next most frequent

uses are to check spelling and pronunciation” (as cited in Nation, 1990, p. 135).

Dictionary has different advantages that make it a useful strategy in comprehending new

words. Dictionaries consist of a large amount of words with several possible definitions that

one word may have in different contexts. Also, it involves examples and idioms that illustrate

more the meaning, as well as the words’ spelling form and their grammatical functions (e.g.

nouns, adjectives, verbs…); all these information are found in the dictionary which is easy to

be used (Nation, 1990). Another advantage was stated by Alderson (2000) who accounted the

usefulness of dictionaries to comprehend the unknown words in reading; he argued that “to

reduce the effect of vocabulary knowledge on measures of reading comprehension, it might

be wise to allow students to compensate for lack of vocabulary by consulting dictionaries”

(p. 99).

However, this strategy has been criticized by various researchers. Bensoussan and

Bensoussan et al. found that “allowing learners to use dictionaries while reading does not

measurably increase their comprehension” (as cited in Nation, 1990, p. 137). Another

criticism was the one of Nuttal (1982, p. 162) who emphasized that the over use of

dictionaries while reading to get the meaning of the unknown words will interrupt the learners

concentration to comprehend the whole text. She claimed that “however, students who keep

looking up new words read much less effectively. Every time you break off to consult a

dictionary, you slow down your reading and interrupt your thinking, […], but constantly

referring to a dictionary makes effective reading impossible”. Thus, we assume that over

reliance on dictionaries minimizes reading comprehension, enjoyment and motivation.

5.3. Guessing from Context Strategy

Besides the previous strategies, guessing or inferring the meaning relying on the context is

the most effective strategy. It was proved that to attack the unknown words that their meaning

is important to comprehend the text as a whole, using the context is an available way to do so.

The context helps in getting the meaning of new words and comprehending the read material.

Cook (2008, p. 59) found that “Guessing is a much- used strategy in language”. Similarly,

Read (2000, p. 53) claimed that “the most important strategy is inferring the meaning from

30

information available in the text itself. Inferencing is a desirable strategy because it involves

deeper processing that is likely to contribute to better comprehension of the text as a whole

[…]”. All this raises the importance of guessing and reflects that it is the most useful and

effective strategy to comprehend any reading text.

5.3.1. Definition of Guessing from Context Strategy

Inferring the meaning of unknown words relying on the context receives the interest of

many researchers. Most of them consider this strategy as the most important one. They have

defined it as the use of clues that the context provides to help readers so much in

comprehending the text without interrupting their reading. Nation (1990, p. 130) found out

that “Guessing from context […] is undoubtedly the most important vocabulary learning

strategy. Its aim is for learners to be able to make a well-informed guess at the meaning of an

unknown word in context without interrupting the reading too much”. In his definition of

inferring strategy, McCarthy (1990, p. 125) stated that “inferring involves creating a schema

for the unknown word, based on world knowledge and the previous experience, both of the

world and the text, it means drawing conclusions as to word meaning […]”. In other words,

making use of the context where words occur as well as the readers’ pre-existing knowledge

about the world and the text will make guesses and inference easy and available.

Clark and Nation (as cited in Nation, 1990: 162) have specified a set of steps that help

students to practice guessing from context strategy. According to them, guessing the meaning

starts by looking closely at the unknown word, then looking at the clause containing this

word, and finally looking at the relationship between the entire clause with other clauses,

phrases and paragraphs.

5.3.2- Kinds of Contextual Clues

Learning words in isolation is an ineffective strategy. Therefore, it is better to put them

into context. That is, once a learner gets across unknown words, the surrounding words and

clauses will give him or her hints about the target words because the context is rich of clues.

McCarthy (199, p. 126) stated that “Guesses were to be made using contextual clues”. Sharing

the same idea of McCarthy, Ying (2001, p. 1) found that “enabling students to derive meaning

with the help of context clues is an effective approach to increase vocabulary and reading

comprehension”.

One of the most influential studies that have classified and identified the contextual clues

that may help the reader to make inferences about unknown words is that developed by

31

Sternberg and Powell (as cited in Read, 2000, p. 54). They distinguished two types of

contexts: internal and external contexts. For them, the external context “is categorized

according to the kinds of semantic information that is available in the text surrounding the

target word”. It means that the reader may rely on the meaning of the words surrounding the

main unknown word to comprehend it. Whereas the internal context “is simply the

morphological structure of the word: prefix, stem, and suffix”, that is to say affixation.

In fact, there are different types of contextual clues that can help the reader infer the

meaning of new words; the following are among the most frequently used ones:

5.3.2.1. Morphological Clues

Morphology is the study of words’ form and structure. It involves the internal structure of

words. Thus, using the morphological features of the word like prefixes, roots and suffixes, or

word parts, will help learners to get the meaning of the word. Scott (2005, p. 72) emphasized

the role of morphology in facilitating the activity of getting the meaning of new words; he

clearly stated that “When a person encounters a new word, its morphology is one of the main

sources of information available to him or her”. Additionally, Carlisle (as cited in Scott, 2005,

p. 72) argued that morphemes “[…] facilitate both reading and understanding of words and

texts”. Therewith, morphology plays a great role in facilitating reading comprehension.

Furthermore, morphological knowledge will help the reader to guess the meaning of new

words. Once readers make use of their knowledge about word derivation, they will find it easy

to infer the meaning of unknown words on the basis of this knowledge. Nagy and Scott (as

cited in Scott, 2005, p. 72) claimed that “knowledge of morphology plays a valuable role in

word learning from context because of the way in which students can use knowledge of a

word’s morphological structure to hypothesize the meaning of a new word”. That is, the

morphological structure of the word provides the reader with contextual clues that help him to

infer its meaning.

5.3.2.1. Definition Clues

Definition clues are used to define the unknown words. Often the writer defines a new

word using different clues like: is/are, is called, is defined as, known as, described as, and

refers to as.

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5.3.2.3. Synonyms and Antonyms

The writer may follow or precede the unknown word with its synonym or opposite which

facilitate its understanding for the reader. Thornbury (2002, p. 9) referred to synonyms as “the

words that share a similar meaning like old and ancient or not new”, and to antonyms as

“words with opposite meanings like old and new”.

5.3.2.4. Hyponyms

By hyponyms, it is meant the relationship that the unknown word has with other group of

words. This relationship shows for the reader that the word either is ‘part of’ something or

‘kind of’ something. Thornbury (2002, p. 9) claimed that “Hyponym is another –nym word

that is useful when talking about the way word meanings are related”. An example of this

relationship is that a cock is kind of birds, and leaves are part of trees (Thornbury, ibid).

5.3.2.5. Alternative Clues

The unknown word may be followed by another known word using the clue ‘or’ to make

the unknown word known. For instance, taking the word Ichthyologists which is new for most

readers, and put it in the following sentence: Ichthyologists, or specialists in the study of fish,

have contributed to our understanding of the past will make its meaning clear (Ying, 2001).

5.3.2.6. Restatement Clues

It is a useful way to explain a new word by other words that makes the meaning of the

target word clear and explicit. The writer may restate his or her words by other familiar,

simplified and known words through the use of different restatement clues such as: In other

words, that is to say, that is …etc.

5.3.2.7. Examples

Authors often mentioned various examples to illustrate more the meaning of the unknown

word. This will help the reader to get knowledge about the use of the word. Ying (2001) gave

the following example: “All the furniture had been completely removed so that not a single

table or chair was to be seen”. Here, the learner is going to guess the meaning of furniture

from the two examples: chair and table.

5.3.2.8. Comparison and Contrast Clues

It is easy to get the meaning of new words when it is compared or contrasted with another

known word. Thus, mentioning the difference and the similarity between words will help the

33

reader to guess what the target word means. The writer may use different clues to compare

and contrast such as: like, unlike, in contrast, similarly, contrastively, but, however, whereas

…etc. For example, Sarah has a long hair, unlike Suzy who has a very short hair. Here, the

learner should be able to guess that long and short are opposites.

5.3.2.9. Grammatical function

Knowing the grammatical function of a new word in a given context is very important to

infer its meaning. The meaning of the word when it takes the function of noun may be

different when it becomes a verb. In English language, there are two kinds of words:

functional words like: and, for, them, to and content words that carry the basic information

like: verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. Both types are important to infer the meaning, and

the absence of one of them will give no sense. Thornbury (2002, p. 4) gave the following two

examples to show the importance of both types: “like looking bits pieces old second-hand

record players doing up look new”, and “I for and like and them to like”. This shows for us

that the combination of both types will give a clear function of each word in the sentence.

Consequently, knowing the position of a given word in the sentence will facilitate in guessing

its meaning.

5.3.2.10. Punctuation

Punctuation helps the reader to guess or infer the meaning of the unknown words. There

are different clues of punctuation such as comas, colons, and semicolons. Also, there are

parentheses and brackets that may involve further explanation or definition of a word, dashes

(they often give extra information about the word), and italics (they often indicate that a word

is a key word, or it is going to be defined), (Ying, 2001). All in all, punctuation clues play a

great role in facilitating reading comprehension since they help in guessing the meaning of

new words.

6. The Importance of Using the Guessing from Context Strategy in Reading

Comprehension

Guessing from context strategy is the most employed strategy used to deal with vocabulary

problem that learners face while reading. Thus, it has a great impact on reading

comprehension. McCarthy (1990, p. 125) considers guessing and inferring meaning from

context the most important strategy that learners rely on to cover the unknown words’

meaning. He argued that inferring the meaning is the process that “good learners would

follow when faced with difficulty in reading, or during a test, or any situation where running

34

to the dictionary or asking someone was not possible or appropriate”. Carnine (as cited in

Alderson, 2000, p. 70) believed that putting words into context is an effective way to learn

words than to tackle them in isolation; he stressed that “Determining the meaning of

unfamiliar words proved to be easier when they were presented in context”. Similarly, Qian

(2004, p. 163) pointed out that this strategy is the best way to deal with new words while

reading. He claimed that “When learners encounter an unknown word in an English text, they

would most likely try to work out the meaning of the word by guessing from context …”.

That is to say, context gives more information about new words than when they come in

isolation.

Additionally, making use of the context to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words facilitates

reading comprehension. Haastrup (as cited in Qian, 2004, p. 156) assumed that “inferencing at

the text level and at the word level bear a close relationship and therefore inferencing can be

considered a comprehension process”. Sadoski (2004, p. 69) also argued that “there is

probably no comprehension without some degree of inference”. Inference is important while

reading to comprehend the writer’s message because the writer does not say every detail; he

or she may let something unsaid, and the reader should make use of the context as well as his

or her pre-existing knowledge to guess what the writer exactly means not what he or she says

(Sadoski, 2004). Therefore, we assume that the aim of reading which is ‘comprehension’ may

be easily reached via inferencing strategy.

All in all, this strategy helps readers to improve their reading comprehension. Ying (2001)

pointed out that inferring the meaning from context strategy builds up the learners attention to

the whole text units (sentences, clauses, paragraphs and the entire text) while they read

because their aim will be to find clues to comprehend the unknown words, and at the same

time to comprehend the whole text rather than to focus on the word itself. This will raise their

motivation to read. Besides, it makes them autonomous learners which make their reading

more effective. They will depend on themselves without the help of the teacher or the

dictionary to comprehend each new word. Finally, Ying (2001, p. 3) claimed that “Training

students to infer meaning from context gives them a powerful aid to comprehension and will

speed up their reading”. Therefore, this strategy will speed learners’ reading and does not

interrupt their reading.

35

Conclusion

This chapter has tackled two main points. First, reading comprehension and

vocabulary. It has shown that reading is a significant language skill that is defined as

communication between the reader and the text requiring him/her to activate his or her prior-

knowledge about both the language and the world in an attempt to figure out the writer’s

message. In doing so, the reader may face different difficulties that can be overcome by using

a variety of strategies. Therefore, the second point was an attempt to shed light on vocabulary

knowledge and guessing from context strategy. Since vocabulary knowledge is important in

the four skills of language, it is very important in reading comprehension. In other words, the

lack of vocabulary knowledge may block or impede reading comprehension. As a result,

readers facing vocabulary problems while reading may adopt different vocabulary learning

strategies especially the most effective ones as the contextual-guessing strategy which

involves a set of techniques that learners may benefit from if teachers draw the students’

attention to their importance and train them to use them more effectively.

����������

Chapter Two: Data Collection and Analysis

Introduction

1. Research Design and Methodology

1.1. Research Setting and Research Participants

1.2. Means of Research

2. Students’ Questionnaire

2.1. The Pilot Questionnaire

2.2. The Final Questionnaire

2.2.1. Description of Students’ Questionnaire

3. Teachers’ Questionnaire

3.1. The Pilot Questionnaire

3.2. The Final Questionnaire

3.3. Description of Teachers’ Questionnaire

4. Data Analysis and Interpretation

4.1. Analysis and Interpretation of Students’ Questionnaire

4.1. 1. Section One: Background Information

4.1.2. Section Two: Reading and Reading Comprehension

4.1.3. Section Three: Vocabulary Learning Strategies (Context-guessing strategy)

4.1.4. Section Four: Further Suggestion or Comments

4.1.5. Discussion of the Results

4.2. Analysis and Interpretation of Teachers’ Questionnaire

4.2.1. Section One: General Information

4.2.2. Section Two: Teachers’ Attitudes about Reading and Reading Comprehension

4.2.3. Section Three: Teachers’ Attitudes about Vocabulary Learning Strategies (The Context-

Guessing Strategy)

4.2.4. Section Four: Further Suggestion or Comments

5. Discussion of the Results

Conclusion

36

Introduction

This chapter is the practical part of this research. It investigates the

hypothesis whether third year LMD students of L’Arbi Ben M’hidi, Oum El Bouaghi would

achieve more successful reading comprehension by making use of guessing from context

strategy to deal with unfamiliar words. This chapter aims at collecting teachers’ and students

‘opinions and attitudes towards the importance of the contextual clues in helping the students

to guess the meaning of unknown words while they read. For this purpose, a questionnaire is

used as a data collection procedure. We will use two questionnaires, one for students and the

other one for teachers. This chapter deals with information about population and sampling, the

research means, description, analysis, and discussion of the results obtained to evaluate the

validity of the research hypothesis.

1. Research Design and Methodology

1.1. Research Means

We have followed a descriptive method by using two questionnaires as our

means of data collection. Questionnaires are the most commonly used

procedures for data collection. They are more efficient in terms of time since

respondents can easily answer the questions and give their opinions and attitudes

that in turn can be easily interpreted and discussed by the researcher.

1.2. Research Setting and Research Participants

Our population is composed of 304 third year LMD students studying at the English

department of L’Arbi Ben Mhidi, Oum El Bouaghi for the academic year 2013/2014. We

have chosen to work with third year because they are supposed to have adequately

developed their reading skill as well as they have employed a variety of certain strategies in

order to comprehend what they are reading. Since it is quite hard to study the whole

population, we dealt with a sample of sixty students (N=60) which represents the fifth (5%)

of the population. However, we have not received three questionnaires after the

administration. Hence, our sample becomes fifty seven students (N=57). On the other hand,

we dealt with fifteen (N=15) teachers of the same department. The participants were

chosen randomly without any specifications.

2. Students’ Questionnaire

2.1. The Pilot Questionnaire

For the present study, we used a pilot questionnaire which we administered to ten

students. This aims at collecting the first data of our students’ opinions about reading and

37

vocabulary knowledge as well as the ways they rely on to deal with vocabulary problems with

more emphasis on guessing from context strategy. After the administration of the

questionnaire, we brought about some changes in the questions and the questions’ items. For

instance, we have changed the form of the following question “Does the use of the dictionary

interrupt your reading comprehension? a) - Yes, b) - No” to the following question “the

overuse of dictionary interrupts your thinking which may affect your reading comprehension:

a) - Agree, or b) - Disagree.” This aims at attracting their attention to one of the

disadvantages of the dictionary. We have written the word ‘rank’ in italics and put it between

two converted comas (Q17) because most students choose just one option; rather than ranking

them according to their importance. This means that we intended to attract their attention to

the key words.

2.2. The Final Questionnaire

2.2.1. Description of Students’ Questionnaire

Students’ questionnaire consists of a written list of twenty seven closed-ended and

open-ended questions. They are related to our study concern. Questions were arranged

from the general to the most specific. So, respondents will develop gradual understanding

of the topic until they reach the main purpose of our questionnaire. The questionnaire is

divided into four sections. Each section has an objective of its own and is designed to

provide us with a specific set of information.

Section one: Background Information (Q 01-02)

This section is regarded as an introductory part. It is an attempt to obtain information

about the participants including the number of years they have spent studying English, and

their attitudes concerning how they consider their level in English.

Section Two: Students’ attitudes towards reading and reading comprehension

(Q 03-16)

The aim of this section is to depict information about the most important language

skill that students would like to master first (Q3). (Q4 & Q5) are concerned with students

reading in English, the frequency of practicing this skill (Q6), and whether they set clear

objectives before they start doing so (Q7). Also, we intend to know if they consider reading

as an easy or difficult task (Q9) with the reasons behind their choices (this concerns only

who consider it as a difficult task (Q10). This section also aims at determining the

importance of vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension (Q11), whether students

encounter vocabulary problems as they read (Q12), to what these problems are related to

(Q13), and if these problems affect the rate of their reading comprehension (Q13) with

38

their main reasons. We conclude this section by Q16 which aims at eliciting students’

opinions about what does reading comprehension really mean.

Section Three: Students’ employed strategies to deal with unfamiliar words focusing

more on context-guessing strategy (Q 17-26).

This section is related directly with our aim of the study. Students are requested to

rank the supposed strategies they would like to employ whenever they encounter new

words while they read. This ranking will be according to the importance of each strategy

(Rank 1 for the most important strategy and Rank 3 for the least important one). Following

(Q17), questions (from 18 to 21) are supposed to determine whether both strategies

“dictionary use” and “word-ignorance” have an effect on reading comprehension,

according to students’ point of view, with the reasons of their answers. Importantly,

students are asked to show the most useful clues they rely on to guess words’ meanings

(Q22), whether these guessed meanings are better retained than given meaning (Q23), and

more specifically whether using these contextual clues would facilitate and improve their

reading comprehension. Finally, (Q24 & Q25) seek to see whether students are encouraged

by their teachers to use this strategy, and to see if they would like to be trained in using this

strategy.

Section Four: Further Suggestion or comments (Q 26)

This section aims to explore the students’ comments or suggestions related to

our topic.

3. Teachers’ Questionnaire

3.1. The Pilot Questionnaire

In order to reach a valid questionnaire, we have administered five questionnaires to

teachers. This aims at collecting the first data about teachers’ opinions about reading and

vocabulary knowledge as well as the important strategies that they may advise their students

to use once they face vocabulary problems as they read with more emphasis on guessing from

context strategy. After the administration of the questionnaire, we brought about many

changes in the questions and the questions’ items. For instance, we have added another option

in (Q6) which is “Averag e” due to the teachers’ comments about including just two options.

In (Q7), we changed the option “a-Very difficult” to “a- Difficult” since most teachers have

given comments about the degree of difficulty. Finally, we changed the form of the following

question (Q12) “If yes, does their reading comprehension get blocked?” to “Do you think that

encountering new words while reading affect the rate of your students’ reading

comprehension?” because many teachers have underlined the word ‘blocked’ which entails

39

that it is inappropriate. Therefore, the pilot questionnaire helped us to reformulate some

questions according to the opinion of the respondents.

3.2. The Final Questionnaire

3.2.1. Description of Teachers’ Questionnaire

Section One: Preliminary Information (Q 01-02)

It includes questions that seek to gather information about the teachers included in

the sample. The first question is about teachers’ degrees. The second question was

meant to collect data about teachers’ experience in teaching English.

Section Two: Teachers’ Attitudes towards Students’ Reading and Reading

comprehension (Q 03-12)

This section aims at gathering information about reading and reading comprehension. It

investigates the teachers’ views about the importance of vocabulary knowledge in reading

comprehension, and the difficulties confronted in vocabulary while reading.

Section Three: Teachers’ attitudes towards the most Students’ employed strategies to

deal with unfamiliar words focusing more on context-guessing strategy (Q 13-20).

This section targeted our aim at investigating the teachers’ views about the important

strategies that they may advise their students to employ in order to deal with unknown words

as they read.

Section Four: Further Suggestion or comments (Q 21)

This section aims to explore the teachers’ comments or suggestions related to

our topic.

4. Data Analysis and Interpretation

4.1. Analysis and Interpretation of Students’ Questionnaire

4.1. 1. Section One: General Information

Q1- How long have you been studying English?

This question seeks simply to identify the number of years that our respondents have

spent studying English through the whole of their lives. This will help us to see their level in

English later on. We have found that the majority of them have spent 10 years studying it.

This is the normal case. While two other small groups have spent (11) and (12) years. This

indicates that they are likely to be repetitives.

40

Q2- How do you consider your level in English?

a) - Good b) - Average c) - Low

Table 01: Students’ Level in English.

Option Number of students Percentage (%)

Good 13 22,81

Average 43 75,43

Low 1 1,76

Total Number 57 100

Figure 03: Students’ Level in English.

As it is indicated above, the great majority of the participants (75, 43 %) affirm that

their level in English is moderate. Another group of students (18%) declare that it is low,

and only 12% of them believed that their level is good. This entails that most of the

students do not have a high level in English; they seem to have an intermediate level in

English, a fact that may help us later on to know about their experience with reading

whether they are poor or good readers.

22,81

75,43

1,76

Good Average Low

Low Average Good

41

4.1.2. Section Two: Reading and Reading Comprehension

Q3- Which language skill would you like to master first: (Organize them in terms of

importance from 1 to 4).

a) - Speaking. b) – Listening.

c) - Reading. d) – Writing.

Table 02: Students’ Preference to Master Language Skills.

Option N %

Speaking 34 59,65

Listening 5 8,77

Reading 7 12,28

Writing 11 19,30

Total Number 57 100

Figure 04: Students’ Preference to Master Language Skills.

The results observed on Table 02 and Figure 04 show that more than half of the

sample (59, 65%) wishes to master the speaking skill first. While writing is their second

choice with a proportion of 19, 30%. On the other hand, reading and listening were their

last choices (12, 28 % for reading followed by 8, 77 % for listening). This also proves that

most of the students are not aware of the fact that these four skills are of the same value and

59,65

8,77 12,2819,3

Speaking Listening Reading Writing

Writing Reading Listening Speaking

42

they are interrelated. We may also interpret these results by the fact that students are not

aware about the importance of reading which as we mentioned in the literature review, is a

source of vocabulary acquisition that learners need to develop the other skills such as

speaking, writing and listening.

Q4- Do you read in English?

a) - Yes b) - No

Table 03: Students Rate of Reading in English.

Option N %

Yes 40 70,18

No 17 29,82

Total Number 57 100

Figure 05: Students Rate of Reading in English.

According to the given data above, the high ratio (70, 18%) concerns those who read in

English. While the low ratio (29, 82%) represents those who do not read in English at all. This

indicates that most students practice reading in English though they previously (Q3) claim

that reading is not their main concern, i.e, they prefer to master speaking and writing first,

then reading. This small comparison may entail that students are not fully aware about the

interrelatedness of the four skills. In fact, developing the speaking and the writing skills

cannot be done without reading because the latter is a rich source for vocabulary

development.

70,18

29,82

Yes No

No Yes

43

Q5- If yes, explain why?

In this question, “Yes” implies the proportion of those who read in English (Q4), and they

are 40 students. They gave two main categories of reasons. First, 33 of them indicate that they

read to get knowledge from the read material. Second, only seven (07) of them claimed that

reading helps them to enrich their vocabulary repertoire as well as it is needed to improve the

other three skills of language: Speaking, listening, and writing which in turn improves their

English level. This proves that just a small number of students have an awareness about the

importance of reading skill, and they are supposed to be the same students who choose

reading (Q3) as their first language skill.

Q6- How often do you read in English?

a) - Frequently B) - Sometimes c) – Rarely

Table 04: Students’ Frequency of Reading.

Option N %

Always 6 10,53

Sometimes 40 70,18

Rarely 11 19,29

Total 57 100

Figure 06: Students’ Frequency of Reading.

This question main aim is to know the students frequency of reading in English. The

above results show that the great majority (70, 18%) of our sample (57) state that they read in

10,53

70,18

19,29

Always Sometimes Rarely

Rarely Sometimes Always

44

English ‘sometimes’, followed by ‘rarely’ (19, 29%) then ‘always’ which represents the low

ratio (10, 18%). We may deduce that ‘sometimes’ which is the choice of the majority

indicates that students are not regular readers. They practice reading from time to time only.

Again, the results are a strong proof about the students’ negligence or unawareness about the

importance of reading. It is also possibly due to the absence of this skill as a separate module

in their curriculum at the department of English because we believe that if it was given a

standing position in the whole program, students may have developed a more positive

attitude, and a greater interest in reading.

Q7- Do you set clear objectives before you begin any reading text?

a) - Yes b) - No

Table 05: Students’ Objectives while reading.

Option N %

Yes 36 63,16

No 21 36,84

Total Number 57 100

Figure 07: Students’ Objectives while reading

By this question, we intend to know whether third year students set clear objectives

before they start reading or not. The results above show that the high percentage (63, 16%) of

our sample (57) stated that they set clear objectives before they start reading. While the rest of

63,16

36,84

Yes No

No Yes

45

the sample (36, 84) claimed that they read without any clear objectives. This reveals that

students who sometimes read in English have their reasons that boost them to do so, and this

will clearly be stated in the following questions.

Q8- Whatever your choice, please explain it

Table 06: Students’ Reasons towards their Objectives while Reading.

Students’ objectives while

reading

N %

a- To get the general idea

(skimming).

09 25

b-To answer specific tasks,

educational purposes

(scanning).

19 52,77

c-To learn about new

vocabulary.

08 22,23

Total 36 100

We have categorized the students’ objectives into three main categories (Table 06). The

majority of them (52, 77%) stated that they read to accomplish their tasks, to do their projects,

and to get their required credit in the exams. In other words, this category involves

educational purposes in which students are required to scan the material being read to get

specific information or to learn something from it. They claimed that they do not like to read

unless they find themselves imposed or obliged to do so since they have no time as they

claimed. This may imply that 52, 77% which is more than half of the investigated sample,

indicates that the reading objectives are strongly related for educational reasons. That is to

say, students are not highly motivated to read for other purposes especially for developing

new vocabulary because 22, 23% claim to do so. All this is followed by a small percentage

(25%) of those who read extensively for pleasure or in their free time to get general idea from

texts. This reflects the real fact that students’ main purpose behind reading is to read in order

to get an average in their exams rather than because they are aware of its importance in

developing their English level. On the other hand, students who stated that they read without

any clear objectives (see Q7) have provided no justifications which means that 36, 84% of the

whole population is not aware about the importance of reading at all.

46

Q9- How do you consider reading in English?

a) - Difficult b) - Easy

Table 07: Students’ Opinions about Reading.

Figure 08: Students’ Opinions about Reading.

The results obtained from Table 06 and Figure 06 above demonstrate the students’

views about reading in English. Most of the respondents ( 71, 92%) consider reading

as a difficult activity. This validates the nature of reading to second language learners.

On the other hand, a small proportion (28, 08%) of the students believes that reading

in English is an easy task for them. Consequently, we may assume from the opinions of the

majority (71, 92%) that students face real difficulties in reading and this entails the necessity

of implementing this skill as a separate module in our department to help learners overcome

this hindering situation by the help of teachers and teaching strategies to make it as easier as

possible.

71,92

28,08

Difficult Easy

Easy Difficult

Option N %

Difficult 41 71,92

Easy 16 28,08

Total Number 57 100

47

Q10- If you choose -a- , please justify

Table 08: Students’ Reasons about Reading Difficulty.

Reading difficulty’s reasons N %

a- Lack of vocabulary

knowledge.

21 51, 21

b- Lack of interest 12 29, 26

c- New grammar rules,

pronunciation, and

new text structure.

08 19, 51

Total 41 100

Our aim behind this question is to know the reasons that make most students consider

reading as a difficult task. Most of them (51, 21%) related this difficulty to the shortage of

their vocabulary knowledge. This reflects the serious problem of new words and new

concepts with different meanings that students encounter as they read. Whereas, (29, 26%)

related this difficulty to their lack of interest. The low ratio (19, 51) considers it difficult

because they face new grammar rules, new words’ pronunciation, and new text structure that

may hinder their reading comprehension. Therefore, we may conclude that all the previous

stated reasons are serious difficulties that may impede the students’ reading comprehension as

we have mentioned in our literature review (Reading Comprehension Difficulties). Thus,

these results prove our position that students are in an urgent need to be taught reading and to

be trained in using more effective strategies to overcome their different reading

comprehension obstacles as well as to raise their reading interest.

Q11- To what extent is vocabulary knowledge important in reading comprehension?

a) – important. b) - not important.

48

Table 09: The Importance of Vocabulary knowledge in Reading Comprehension.

Option N %

Important 57 100

Not important 00 00

Total Number 57 100

Figure 09: The Importance of Vocabulary knowledge in Reading Comprehension

We notice from the given data that all the students (57) that represent 100% of the

sample reach an agreement about the importance of vocabulary knowledge in reading

comprehension and no one of them (0%) denied this fact. This entails that vocabulary

knowledge seems to be the most important component in reading comprehension and its

absence may affect the rate of comprehension. This finding highlights again what students

stated in the previous question (Q10) respectively about the importance of this issue though it

contradicts with what they stated in (Q3) where they have ranked reading at a third position to

be mastered by learners. This can be explained by the fact that students believe in the

importance of vocabulary knowledge but they do not really put it into practice because in a

normal situation, s/he who believes in the importance of developing vocabulary knowledge

should be more conscious about its usefulness for developing the other skills “writing and

speaking” which were ranked at a first position in (Q3).

100

0

Important Not Important

Not Important Important

49

Q12- Do you face vocabulary problems while reading?

a) - Yes b) – No

Table 10: Encountering Vocabulary Problems While Reading.

Option N %

Yes 46 80,7

No 11 19,3

Total Number 57 100

Figure 10: Encountering Vocabulary Problems While Reading.

This question seeks to know whether students encounter vocabulary problems when

they read or not. The results above confirm that most students (80, 7%) face vocabulary

problems. On the other hand, those who select ‘No’ claimed that they do not face any

vocabulary problems in their reading. This group of students represents the minority of our

sample (19, 3%). The explanation that can be provided is that any lack in vocabulary

knowledge will hinder the process of reading comprehension and therefore raises again the

necessity of implementing the reading skill as a separate module to teach the possible

different reading strategies to help students overcome the difficulties they face in learning

new vocabulary and developing reading comprehension.

80,7

19,3

Yes No

No Yes

50

Q13- If yes, are these problems related to:

a) - Unfamiliar words.

b) - Unfamiliar topic.

c) - Both of them.

Table 11: Types of Vocabulary Problems Faced by Students while Reading.

Option N %

Unfamiliar words 20 35,9

Unfamiliar topic 3 5,26

Both of them 23 46,36

No answer 11 19,29

Total Number 57 100

Figure 11: Types of Vocabulary Problems Faced by Students while Reading.

This question concerns only those who stated that they face vocabulary problems while

they read. We intend to know the most types of these problems. We have obtained different

views as it is shown above. 35, 9% represents those who related vocabulary problems to

“unfamiliar words”. The low ratio (5, 26%) represents those who related them to “unfamiliar

35,9

5,26

46,36

19,29

Unfamiliar words Unfamiliar Topic Both of them No Answer

No answer Both of them Unfamiliar topic Unfamiliar words

51

topic”. While the high ratio (46, 36% of the whole sample) represents those who related these

problems to both unfamiliar words and unfamiliar topic. This sheds light on the importance of

vocabulary knowledge in facilitating reading comprehension. At the end, the ratio 19, 29%

represents the eleventh students who stated in question (12) that they do not face any

vocabulary problems which results in no answers in this question. Consequently, the higher

percentage (46, 36%) reveals that there are problems that should be solved by teaching the

reading skill to help students overcome the raised problems above.

Q14- Do you stop at any unknown word to check up its meaning?

a) - Yes b) - No

Table 12: Stopping Reading due to new words.

Option N %

Yes 41 71,93

No 16 28,07

Total Number 57 100

Figure 12: Stopping Reading due to new words.

Encountering new words while reading may result in taking a break each time to check

up their meanings. This question aims at confirming or disconfirming this statement relying

on the majority of the students’ views. From the above results, we notice that the high ratio

(71, 93%) indicates that most students stop reading whenever they get across new words.

71,93

28,07

Yes No

No Yes

52

Whereas just 28, 07% of them do not cut off their reading. Our explanation may be that most

students are aware about the role of word meaning to comprehend any read material.

However, this requires an awareness about which strategy is more beneficial and helpful to

get the meaning of words.

Q15- Whatever your choice, please justify your answer

Students tried to give us various reasons behind whether they stop reading whenever

they get across new words or not. Those who stated before they stop reading at each new

word to check up its meaning believe that the meaning of each word in the text contributes in

building up the meaning of the whole text; therefore, they have to cover all the words

meanings. Others stated that they do so to enrich their vocabulary knowledge and to enlarge

their vocabulary repertoire. Moreover, they argued that it is necessary to know the meaning of

each new word to assure a better reading if they face it again. However, those who have an

opposite point of view argued that it is not necessary to stop at each new word because this

will interrupt their thinking, take time, and they will get bored. Most of them indicate that

they can guess its meaning from the context provided since their focus is to get a general idea

from the read material. Others claimed that they will focus just on the key words not all the

words meanings. Consequently, both groups gave reasonable arguments which leads us to

deduce that word meaning is important in reading comprehension.

Q16- According to you, reading comprehension relies on: (You can choose more than one

option).

a) - Information processing abilities (cognitive abilities).

b) - The meaning of words.

c) - Previous knowledge about the topic.

d) - All of them.

53

Table 13: Students’ Perceptions about Reading Comprehension.

Option N %

Cognitive abilities 19 33,33

The meaning of

words

9 15,8

Previous knowledge

a about the topic

4 7,01

All of them 25 43,85

Total Number 57 100

Figure 13: Students’ Perceptions about Reading Comprehension.

The aim behind this question is to get the students’ insights about reading

comprehension. We found that 33, 33% out of the whole sample believe that reading

comprehension relies on the readers’ cognitive abilities. 15, 8% of them believe that it relies

on the words meaning, 7, 01% believe that it relies on the previous knowledge about the

topic. Whereas, the majority of them (43, 85%) related reading comprehension to all the

previous options. An explanation to this may be that students are aware about what is really

meant by reading comprehension since it is the readers’ cognitive ability to understand new

33,33

15,8

7,01

43,85

Cgnitive abilities Words meaning Previous knowledge

about the topic

All of them

All of them Previous knowledge about the topic

Words meaning Cgnitive abilities

54

things in relation to their pre-existing knowledge about the topic. Therefore, we conclude that

relying on the cognitive abilities to decipher the meaning of words relates to the concept of

“guessing” which we believe is important in facilitating more reading comprehension.

4.1.3. Section Three: Vocabulary Learning Strategies (Context-guessing strategy)

Q17- When you get across new words, do you: please ‘rank’ your choices from the most

important (1) to the less important (3).

a) - Use the Dictionary. b) - Ignore these words.

c) - Use the context to guess their meanings.

Table 14: Strategies Used by Learners to Deal with New Words.

Options Dictionary % Ignore them % Guessing %

Rank 1 16 28,08% 2 3,50% 39 68,42%

Rank 2 39 68,42% 1 1,75% 17 29,82%

Rank 3 2 3,50% 54 94,73% 1 1,76%

Total 57 100% 57 100% 57 100%

55

Figure 14: Strategies Used by Learners to Deal with New Words.

This question aims at reviewing the students most employed strategies to deal with new

words while they read. Hence, table 12 and Figure 12 above reveal that the employed

strategies are ranked according to their importance from Rank 1 to Rank 3. The results show

that the most important used strategy is ‘guessing from context’, taking the rank number 1, by

a ratio of 68, 42%. The second employed strategy that takes the rank number 2 is the

‘dictionary use’ by a ratio of 68, 42%. While the less employed strategy is the ‘word

ignorance’ (94, 73%) in rank number 3. These results reveal that students are aware about the

importance of guessing in spite of the fact they find reading as a difficult skill and they face

vocabulary problems while they read. This raises our attention to that even though they are

aware about its importance, they may not be aware about how, when, and why to use it. This

entails the need for strategy-training to use it appropriately in order to facilitate their reading

comprehension and overcome their vocabulary problems.

3,5 1,75

94,73

28,08

68,42

3,5

68,42

29,82

1,76

Rank 1 Rank 2 Rank 3

Ignorance Dictionary Guessing

56

Q18- The overuse of dictionary will interrupt your thinking which may affect your

reading comprehension.

a) - Agree b) - Disagree

Table 15: The Effect of the Dictionary Use on Reading Comprehension.

Option N %

Agree 43 75,44

Disagree 14 24,56

Total Number 57 100

Figure 15: The Effect of the Dictionary Use on Reading Comprehension

The purpose behind this question is to see whether the overuse of the dictionary has an

effect on reading comprehension. The above results reveal that most students (75, 44%) agree

that the overuse of the dictionary interrupts their reading comprehension. The rest of the

sample which represent the low ratio (24, 56%) disagree with the statement that the dictionary

has an effect on reading comprehension adopting the opposite view. Their reasons will be

illustrated in the following question.

Q19- Whatever your answer, Justify it

Since most students agree with the fact that the overuse of dictionaries interrupts their

reading comprehension. We added this question to figure out their explanations for this point

of view. This group of students assumes that consulting the dictionaries to check up the

75,44

24,56

Agree Disagree

Disagree Agree

57

meaning of many words affects their reading. They will lose their ideas because the text ideas

are interrelated. So, losing one idea requires from the readers to start again reading.

Furthermore, they stated that some English words have different meanings in different

contexts; hence the dictionary meaning may not be the appropriate one; it would be better to

rely on guessing it from the context. Others claimed that consulting dictionaries so much will

make them passive readers rather than active readers because they will depend more on

dictionaries and neglect their cognitive abilities (guessing). The other group of students who

have the opposite view about the effect of dictionaries on reading comprehension claimed that

dictionaries facilitate reading comprehension because it is necessary to understand the key

words meanings to comprehend better.

Q20- Will you comprehend more if you ignore new words?

a) - Yes b) - No

Table 16: The Effect of Word-Ignorance on Reading Comprehension.

Option N %

Yes 15 26,31

No 42 73,32

Total Number 57 100

Figure 16: The Effect of Word-Ignorance on Reading Comprehension.

This question helps us in discovering whether ignoring new words affects the students’

reading comprehension. We have found that 73, 32% represents the higher percentage of

26,31

73,31

Yes No

No Yes

58

those whom their reading comprehension may be affected when they ignore new words as

reading. The other proportion of the sample (26, 31%) represents the minority of those who

believe that their reading comprehension will not be affected by word ignorance. These

findings highlight the importance of vocabulary knowledge for reading comprehension, and

correlate with what the students’ stated previously (Q13) about the difficulties they face while

reading those related to related to unknown words.

Q21- Whatever your choice, explain it

Some causes were presented by students to illustrate their views about the word-

ignorance effect on reading comprehension. Students who are against this strategy since it

affects their reading comprehension assumed that it is not a useful way to ignore words in the

text because their meanings are important in comprehension (73, 32%). Some new words are

key words, so the reader must do his or her best to find their meanings rather than ignoring

them. Whereas those who reveal that word-ignorance has no effect on their reading

comprehension (26, 31%) claimed that some words add nothing to the meaning of the text, so

it is better to ignore them and continue reading because their aim is to understand the general

ideas of the text, rather than focusing on isolated words’ meanings. On the basis of the

majority’s view (73, 32%) we conclude that this strategy is not as efficient as both guessing

and dictionary use strategies; the thing that makes most students ranked it in Rank3 (Q17).

Q22- Which of the following clues do you use to guess the meaning of new words:

(You can choose more than one if necessary)

a) - Look at prefixes, suffixes, and roots.

b) - Look at comparison and contrast clues.

c) - Restatement clues (expressions like in other words, that is to say …).

d) - Definition clues.

e) - Punctuation clues.

59

Table 17: Kinds of Contextual Clues Used by Students.

Option N %

a 3 5,26

b 2 3,50

c 3 5,26

d 3 5,26

e 4 7,01

a+b 11 19,29

c+d 8 14,03

a+c+e 5 8,8

a+b+c+d 5

8,8

a+b+c+d+e 13 22,80

Total 57

100

Figure 17: Contextual clues Used by Students.

5,263,5

8,85,26

7,01

19,29

14,03

5,268,8

22,8

a b c d e a+b c+d a+c+e a+b+c+d All of

them

All of them a+b+c+d a+c+e c+d a+b e d c b a

60

Our aim behind this question is to get an overview about how students use the context to

guess the meaning of new words. By looking quickly to the above results, we notice that all

the students (57) make use of different kinds of contextual clues. They use either one type of

them (a, b, c, or d) or a variety of more than one type (a+b, a+c+e …), or all of them. The

majority of our sample (13), making up (22, 80%), make use of the combination of all kinds

of clues (a+b+c+d+e). The minority of them make use of just one type in isolation (5, 26% for

“a”, “c”, and “d”, 3, 50% for “b”, and 7, 01% for “e”). Followed by those who combined two

or more kinds of clues (19, 29% for (a+b), 14, 03% for (c+d), and 8, 8% for (a+c+e) and

(a+b+c+d). We may conclude that students are aware of the importance of the different clues

that are provided by the context and their role in facilitating guessing the unfamiliar words’

meanings though they confirmed that they do not read in regular ways (see Q6). These results

impel us to recommend again the importance of teaching the reading skill as a separate

module in our department to make students put these precious views in more real practical

situations and to get more beneficial outcomes.

Q23- Do you think that guessed meanings are better retained than given meanings?

a) - Yes b) - No

Table 18: The Retention of Guessed and Given Meanings.

Option N %

Yes 39 68,42

No 18 31,58

Total Number 57 100

Figure 18: The Retention of Guessed and Given Meanings.

68,42

31,58

Yes No

No Yes

61

The results presented on both Table 16 and Figure 16 are obtained from students in order

to know whether the guessed meaning is better retained than the given meaning. The results

show that the majority of students (68, 42%) asserted that guessed meanings are better

remembered than given meanings, and 31, 58% claimed the opposite. That is, ready-made

explanations of the unclear words have a low possibility to be retained later on in other

contexts. Thus, we may infer that guessed meanings contribute better in words’ retention than

the given ones because the readers engage in a more critical thinking and analysis to get the

meaning of these words and therefore will be more likely able to remember them as they

involved themselves in finding out what they mean. This finding highlights the importance of

guessing from context as a significant strategy to learn and memorize effectively any new

vocabulary item.

Q24- According to you, using the contextual clues to guess the meaning of new words

facilitates reading comprehension?

a) - Yes b)- No

Table 19: The role of Guessing from Context Strategy in Reading Comprehension.

Figure 19: The Importance of Guessing from Context Strategy in Reading

Comprehension.

82,45

17,55

Yes No

No Yes

Option N %

Yes 47 82,45

No 10 17,55

Total Number 57 100

62

This question aims at providing information about students’ opinions about the importance

of using contextual clues to guess the meaning of the unfamiliar words, and whether it

facilitates their reading comprehension. The results indicate that 82, 45% out of our whole

sample have a positive view about the importance of this strategy in reading comprehension,

and only 17, 55% of them have a negative view. Again, we may deduce that students are

aware about its importance, however we do not really have a solid background of its

efficiency in real situations since “reading” as a separate skill is not taught in our department

only via the integrated-skill approach. Therefore, we have raised question (26) to know about

students’ future perspectives about implementing strategy-training in the curriculum.

Q25-Do your teachers encourage you to use the context-guessing strategy while reading?

a) - Yes b) - No

Table 20: Teachers’ Role in Encouraging Students to Use Guessing from Context Strategy.

Figure 20: Teachers’ Role in Encouraging Students to Use Guessing from Context

Strategy.

As an intention to get information from the students about whether their teachers

encourage them to use the context to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words, we ask them this

68,42

31,58

Yes No

No Yes

Option N %

Yes 39 68,42

No 18 31,58

Total Number 57 100

63

question. The majority of them (68, 42%) confirm that their teachers really encourage them to

use this strategy while reading. In fact, this is concretely taught in the programme of first year

in the department of English; the “Methodology Module”, where students are taught to use

“contextualization” while reading (see the Appendix Ш, first year Methodology Programme).

However, the low ratio (31, 58%) represents those who denied the fact that their teachers

encourage them to do so.

Q26- Would you like to be trained in using this strategy?

a) - Yes b) - No

Table 21: Students’ opinions about Strategy-Training Instructions.

Figure 21: Students’ opinions about Strategy-Training Instructions.

We raised this question to get students’ opinions about whether they would like to be

trained in using this strategy. We have found that (82, 46%) of our respondents which is the

highest appreciates the implementation of the strategy-training idea, and they would like to be

trained in using the contextual-guessing strategy specifically. However, (17, 54%) is the low

ratio that represents those who do not appreciate this idea.

82,46

17,54

Yes No

No Yes

Option N %

Yes 47 82,46

No 10 17,54

Total Number 57 100

64

4.1.4. Section Four: Further Suggestion and comments

Q25: Any further suggestions?

Among the 57 students who participated in completing the questionnaire, only 8 of

them answered the last question. Their comments run around the necessity and

the importance of dealing with vocabulary problems using different strategies basically

guessing from context strategy. They consider it as a useful way to improve their reading.

This reflects their awareness of the value of both of strategic reading and the importance

of vocabulary knowledge in reading. Considering these suggestions, they seem to focus

on the importance of the reading skill and how it should be given the same attention as

the other skills.

5.1.5. Discussion of the Results

The analysis of the students’ questionnaire reveals many results. From Q1, we assume

that the majority of students have been studying English for 10 years. This is likely to be

the case including middle and high school. That is to say, during these 10 years, students

are thought to be more familiar with reading. Therefore, at this level (third year university

education); it is supposed that they have acquired certain strategies to deal with new words.

Thus, third year students are more likely to be skillful to respond or react to the English

language than first year because the number of years influence the students’ ways of

learning and adopting different strategies. Q2 showed that the majority of students (75,

43%) have an “average level” in English. Generally, an average level indicates that

students still have problems in English language especially with vocabulary because words

are the main means of communication. This is clearly stated in Q3 in which (59, 65% + 19,

30%) of the students’ main concern is to develop their speaking and writing skills

respectively forgetting about the reading skill which is said to be a rich source for

developing new vocabulary (it has received only 12, 28%).

Questions (4, 5, 6, and 7) showed that the majority (70, 18%) of students read in English

for many reasons mainly for educational purposes. Moreover, they practice this skill from

time to time, i.e, ‘sometimes’ rather than always, but this is a good rate for students who

are supposed to graduate from the English Department with a high diploma. This means

that students are not aware about the importance of reading in enhancing their level in

English. This proves what they stated in (Q3) where they ranked reading as their third

preferable skill after speaking and writing.

Questions (9, 10, and 11) indicate that most students (71, 92%) find reading as a

difficult skill. They related this difficulty to the complexity of this process, and specifically

65

to the unfamiliar words that English texts consist of. This reflects the importance of

vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension; the point that all students agreed upon in

(Q11). Therefore, we assume that a strong relation combines these two components:

Vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. It seems that vocabulary knowledge

determines students’ reading comprehension, and a deficiency in such a component

impedes their reading comprehension. Consequently, students are required to be active

readers and interact with the text by using their intelligence to make connections between

their prior-knowledge and new things presented in the text to infer the writers’ intended

meaning. Here again raises the importance of implementing this skill as a separate module

in the department to teach learners more about strategies involved in facilitating their

reading comprehension mainly the use of the contextual-guessing strategy.

(Q17) was the core of our questionnaires’ aim as well as the whole study. We reached

that our students employ three main strategies to deal with new words. However, they use

them according to their degree of importance. The majority (68, 42%) ranked ‘contextual-

guessing strategy’ as the most important strategy. Followed by ‘dictionary use’ (Rank 2).

Nearly all of them (94, 73%) avoid ‘word-ignorance strategy’ use. A possible explanation

to this may be due to the usefulness of contextual clues that students have been taught

about in first year with the methodology programme. This strategy helps them to deduce

the words’ appropriate meanings in the appropriate context without the others’ help. While

the main reason behind ranking the dictionary as their second option is illustrated in both

(Q18 and Q19) where they relate it to their belief that the overuse of dictionaries will

interrupt their comprehension. (Q21 & Q22) have shown that word-ignorance, as a

strategy has received a little importance because the words’ knowledge is at the core of any

reading comprehension.

As a conclusion, since students believe in the importance of ‘contextual-guessing

strategy’ we tried to know the role of teachers in encouraging students to use this strategy.

Indeed, most students revealed that their teachers do so. This improves that our teachers too

are aware about the usefulness of contextual clues, and this will be illustrated more in the

teachers’ questionnaire. As a result, this raises our curiosity to ask students about the use of

strategy-training instruction that aims at improving their language learning via teaching

them how, when, and why to employ certain strategies. The majority of students (82, 46%)

appreciates this idea and they stated that they would like to be trained in using this strategy

more if reading is implemented as a separate module.

In a nutshell, we may say that even though students have not scored highly about the

frequency of reading, they are almost aware about its importance as well as strategic

66

reading mainly the contextual-guessing strategy to foster more comprehension. What is

unfortunately missing is a decisive measure to include “the reading skill” as an independent

subject-matter along with the other modules to benefit from this positive background, i.e,

the students’ awareness about the importance of reading, and to make it more and more

effective.

5.2. Analysis and Interpretation of Teachers’ Questionnaire

5.2.1. Section One: General Information

Q1- Degrees held(s):

a) - BA (licence) b) - Master c) - Magister d) - Ph. D (Doctorate)

Table 22: Teachers’ Degrees.

Option a b c d Total

Number 1 2 11 1 15

% 6,67 13, 33 73, 33 6, 67 100

Figure 22: Teachers’ Degrees.

As table 22 indicates, the highest percentage (73, 33%) is that of teachers who have got

a Magister degree. (13, 33%) of the teachers have got Master. Only one teacher (6, 67%)

has a Doctorate degree. Finally, only (6, 67%) of those who have got a Licence.

6,6713,33

73,33

6,67

BA (licence) Master Magister Ph. D (Doctorate)

Ph. D Magister Master BA (Licence)

67

Q2- How long have you been teaching English?

Table 23: Teachers’ Experience in Teaching English.

Options Number %

1-5 3 20

5-10 5 33, 34

More than 10 years 7 46, 66

Total 15 100

Figure 23: Teachers’ Experience in Teaching English.

This question aims at knowing teachers’ experience in teaching English. The most

experienced teachers (46, 66%) have been teaching for more than 10 years. We can see that

(33, 34%) have no more than 10 years of experience in the field of teaching. Finally, the

lowest percentage (20%) is for teachers who have been teaching from 1 to 5 years. This

implies that most teachers have enough experience in English teaching and thus may

provide us with the required data for this research.

5.2.2. Section Two: Teachers’ attitudes towards Reading and Reading

Comprehension

Q3- Which language skill is the most difficult for your students to master?

(You can choose more than one option)

a) - Listening b) - Speaking c) - Reading d) - Writing

20

33,34

46,66

1 to 5 5 to 10 More than 10

More than 10 5 to 10 1 to 5

68

Table 24: Teachers' Evaluation of the Students' Most Difficult Skill.

Option N %

Listening 1 6, 67

Speaking 5 33,34

Reading 1 6,67

Writing 6 40

All of them 2 13, 34

Total 15 100

Figure 24: Teachers' Evaluation of the Students' Most Difficult Skill.

This question aims at knowing how teachers view their students’ difficulties with

regard to the four language skills. As Table 24 and Figure 24 above show, the majority of

teachers (40%) stated that their students face difficulties mainly with writing. Other

teachers (33, 33%) think that speaking is the most difficult skill for students to learn and

master. A small proportion of teachers (6, 67%) have chosen reading to be the most

difficult skill for students to master and (6, 67%) of them have also selected listening.

Whereas, just two of them (13, 34%) have picked up all the skills to be difficult. So, for the

majority of teachers, speaking and writing are the most difficult. However, only two of

them claim that all the language skills are similar in terms of difficulty. The reasons behind

these choices are to be mentioned in the following question.

6,67

33,34

6,67

40

13,34

Listening Speaking Reading Writing All of them

All of them Writing Reading Speaking Listening

69

Q4- Please, clarify your answer

Teachers clarify their choices as follows. For those who choose writing claimed that

this skill is difficult because it demands an attention for many things from the student

including a structural and cohesive form that necessitates an awareness and knowledge of

the mechanics of writing. Teachers who believe that students face difficulty while speaking

argued that speaking, as writing, is a productive skill that needs an appropriate use of

language to express their ideas and thoughts. They seem to share the same idea with

students (see students’ questionnaire, Q4) who wish to master this skill first. Whereas the

teacher who chooses reading declared that students may face a difficulty in comprehending

the content-related text. They related this difficulty to the kind of vocabulary contained in

the read material. The other teacher who chooses listening argued that since students are

not native speakers, they will find a difficulty in interpreting the words they are listening

to. Finally, the two other teachers who select all the skills to be difficult for EFL learners

declared that these four competencies illustrate how a learner receives a language and how

s/he will produce it. In addition, they clearly stated that these four skills are complementary

to each other because teachers are supposed to teach and integrate the four skills in order to

teach the language as a whole. We may deduce that most teachers have chosen “writing

and listening” to be the most difficult skills to be mastered by students because the reading

skill is not taught independently in our department and therefore cannot provide us with a

clear picture about whether it is difficult or easy. Yet, in the students’ questionnaire,

learners have claimed that it is a difficult task, see (Q9 in students’ questionnaire).

These results unveil an important fact about the necessity of bridging the gap between

the teachers’ views and the learners’ views. Hence, more emphasis should be given to this

skill without which learners cannot develop the required vocabulary needed for the

development of the other skills, i.e, writing, speaking and listening.

Q5- Do you encourage your students to read in English?

a) - Yes b) - No

Table 25: Teachers’ Encouragement to their Students to Read in English.

Option N %

Yes 15 100

No 00 00

Total Number 15 100

70

Figure 25: Teachers’ Encouragement to their Students to Read in English

The above results indicate that all teachers (100%) do encourage their students to read.

This assures that teachers are aware of the importance of reading to learn the English

language. However, with a comparison with the students’ questionnaire results, we may

assume that even if teachers encourage their students to read, students read only sometimes

as they claimed in (Q6). One explanation for that may be due to the absence of reading

module in our department because if it is introduced, learners would strive more efforts to

red especially if it is evaluated and graded.

Q6- How do you rate your students reading comprehension?

a) - Good b) - Average c) - Poor

Table 26: Teachers’ Evaluation of their Students' Reading Comprehension.

Option N %

Good 2 13,34

Average 5 33,33

Poor 7 46,66

No answer 1 6,67

Total 15 100

100

0

Yes No

No Yes

71

Figure 26: Teachers’ Evaluation of their Students' Reading Comprehension.

This question intends to know how teachers evaluate their students reading

comprehension. We found that the ratio 46, 66% represents the majority of those who

consider their students reading comprehension as “poor”; followed by (33, 33%) who

evaluate their students’ reading comprehension as “average”. Only two teachers (13,

34%) stated that their students’ reading comprehension is “good”, and one teacher gave no

answer to this question. One can assume that the majority of teachers believe that students

may have difficulties to comprehend the read material while they read and this may be one

of the reasons that makes students read only ‘sometimes’ as they declared in (Q6). (see

students’ questionnaire).

Q7- Do you think that your students find reading:

a) – Difficult. b) – Easy.

Table 27: Teachers’ Opinions about the Difficulty of Reading for Students.

Option N %

Yes 10 66,67

No 04 26,66

No answer 1 6,67

Total 15 100

13,34

33,33

46,66

6,66

Good Average Poor No answer

Poor Average Good No answer

72

Figure 27: Teachers’ Opinions about the Difficulty of Reading for Students.

This question aims at knowing the teachers’ views about whether reading is difficult or

easy for their students. We found that the majority (66, 67%) think that their students find

reading difficult. This reflects the reason behind why students consider their reading

comprehension as “average” or “poor”, rather than “good” (Q6, students’ questionnaire).

On the other hand, only four teachers (26, 66%) stated the opposite view, and one did not

give any answer. According to the majority (66, 67%), we may conclude that reading is not

an easy task, rather it is a difficult one that needs to be taken seriously by implementing it

in the curriculum and teaching it as a separate module.

Q8- If you choose -a-, please justify your answer

Table 28: Teachers’ Reasons about why is reading difficult for students.

Teachers’ Reasons of

Reading Difficulty

N %

Lack of Interest 04 40

Lack of Vocabulary

Knowledge

06 60

Total 10 100

We have categorized the teachers’ reasons into two main categories. Our aim here is

to know the main reasons that make teachers believe that their students really find reading

as a difficult skill. As table 28 shows, four teachers (40%) claim that the difficulty lies in

the students’ lack of interest. Again, this can be explained by the absence of the reading

module in our department. The second category stated by most teachers (60%) is related to

10

4

1

Yes No No answer

No answer No Yes

73

the students’ lack of vocabulary knowledge that makes their reading very difficult. This

shows that teachers are aware about the value of this issue (vocabulary knowledge) in

reading comprehension and how its shortage may make reading a difficult task. Therefore,

this leads us to call for the need of raising students’ interest in reading by helping them to

deal with the vocabulary related problems via specific and effective strategies.

Q9- How do you evaluate vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension?

a) - Very important. b) - Important.

c) - Less important. d) - Not important.

Table 29: Teachers’ views about the importance of vocabulary knowledge in reading

Comprehension.

Option N %

Very important 10 66,67

Important 5 33,33

Less Important 0 00

Not important 0 00

Total 15 100

Figure 28: Teachers’ views about the importance of vocabulary knowledge in reading

Comprehension.

The results of this question are considered as a proof about the teachers’ awareness

concerning the importance of vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension. The above

66,67

33,33

0 0

Very important important Less important Not important

Not important Less important Important Very important

74

data entails that all the teachers (15) have chosen ‘a’ and ‘b’ and no one chooses “less

important” or not important”. We notice that the majority of them (66, 67%) considers this

issue as “very important”; followed by (33, 33%) who considers it as “important”. This

proves that teachers, as well as students see (Q11) in the students’ questionnaire, are aware

about this issue to be the most crucial component in reading comprehension, and how its

absence may affect the rate of comprehension (this will be more confirmed in (Q13).

Q10- Do your students encounter vocabulary problems while reading?

a) - Yes b) - No

Table 30: Teachers’ views about the students’ vocabulary problems while reading.

Option N %

Yes 15 100

No 00 00

Total Number 15 100

Figure 29: Teachers’ views about the students’ vocabulary problems while reading.

The above results show that all the teachers (100%) noticed that their students really

face vocabulary problems while they read. This emphasizes our position that highlights the

urgent need to help students to overcome this obstacle as well as the need to increase the

teachers’ role in facilitating their students’ reading comprehension. This can be done under

one condition which is strategy-training instruction that teaches students how to deal with

this problem using the appropriate strategies. However, this instruction in turn cannot be

applied unless a separate module of reading is implemented.

100

0

Yes No

No Yes

75

Q11- If you choose -a- , are these problems related to:

a) - Unfamiliar words b) - Unfamiliar topics c) - Both of them

Table 31: Teachers’ reasons for their students vocabulary-related problems.

Option N %

Unfamiliar words 3 20

Unfamiliar topics 2 13, 34

Both of them 10 66, 67

Total 15 100

Figure 30: Teachers’ reasons for their students vocabulary-related problems.

This question intends to illustrate more the issue of vocabulary problems. Teachers

were requested to choose the main possible reasons behind these problems (see table 32

and figure 32). We notice that 20% out of the whole sample related these problems to

unfamiliar words, 13, 34% related it to unfamiliar topics, and 66, 67% of them related it to

unfamiliar words as well as unfamiliar topics. These results reveal the importance of

vocabulary knowledge in facilitating reading comprehension or impeding it. Therefore,

more efforts should be striven to overcome this hindering situation.

21

7

Unfamiliar words Unfamiliar topics Both of them

Both of them Unfamiliar words Unfamiliar topics

76

Q12- Do you think that encountering new words while reading affect the rate of your

students’ reading comprehension?

a) - Yes b) - No

Table 32: Teachers’ views about the effect of new words on their students’ reading

Comprehension.

Option N %

Yes 10 66,67

No 3 20

No answer 2 13,33

Total 15 100

Figure 31: Teachers’ views about the effect of new words on their students’ reading

Comprehension.

Our aim behind this question is to know the teachers’ views about the effect of new

words on the students’ reading comprehension. The above data show that the high ratio

(66, 67%) represents those who believe that once their students get across new words; their

reading comprehension will be affected. While just three of them (20%) neglected this

effect, and two did not give any answer. One explanation to this may be that the majority of

teachers are aware about the difficulty that foreign leaners may experience once they face

unfamiliar words which may impede their reading comprehension. Therefore, the results

66,67

2013,33

Yes No No answer

No answer No Yes

77

obtained strengthens our position about the importance of vocabulary knowledge in

facilitating more comprehension.

5.2.3. Section Two: Teachers’ Attitudes about Vocabulary Learning Strategies (The

Context- Guessing Strategy)

Q13- When your students encounter new words, do you advise them to: Please rank

your choices from the most important (1) to the less important (3)

a) - Use the Dictionary. b) - Ignore these words.

c) - Use the context to guess their meanings.

Table 33: Teachers’ most Sustained Strategies Given to Students to Deal with New Words.

Options Dictionary % Ignoranc

e

% Guessing % No

answer

Rank 1 4 26,67

00

00 11 73,33 00

Rank 2 11 73,33

00

00 4 26,67 00

Rank3 0 00

11

73,33 00 00 04

No

answer

0 00

04

26,67 00 00 00

Total

15

100

15

100

15

100

78

Figure 32: Teachers’ most sustained strategies Given to Students to Deal with New

Words.

This question aims at knowing the most suitable strategies that teachers may advise

their students to employ whenever they face unfamiliar words as they read. As table 34 and

figure 34 show, teachers have ranked the most advised strategies given to their students

according to their importance from Rank1 to Rank3. We noticed that similarly to students’

results (see Q17), teachers too ranked “guessing from context strategy” in rank number 1

by a percentage of 73, 33%, four teachers (26, 67%) rank dictionary use to be the most

important employed strategy in the same rank (Rank1), and no one (00%) chooses word-

ignorance to be in the first rank. In Rank2, the majority of them (73, 33%) choose the

dictionary use to be the second important employed strategy, the rest (26, 67%) selected

guessing strategy to be the second employed one, and no one too choose word-ignorance in

this rank. Finally, in Rank3, the high ratio (73, 33%) represents these who choose word-

ignorance to be the least important strategy, and the rest of them (26, 67%) did not choose

any strategy which means that they do not advise their students to ignore new words. These

results reveal that contextual-guessing strategy is the most important one according to the

teachers’ point of view which seems to be similar to the students’ view. So, these findings

confirm our hypothesis about the importance of contextual guessing in facilitating the

students’ reading comprehension.

Q14- Do you think that checking up the dictionary interrupts your students’ thinking

and affects their reading comprehension?

a) - Yes b) - No

0 0

73,33

26,67

73,33

0

73,33

26,67

0

26,67

Rank 1 Rank 2 Rank 3

Ignorance Dictionary Guessing No answer

79

Table 34: The Effect of the Dictionary Use on the Students’ Reading Comprehension.

Option N %

Yes 12 80

No 3 20

Total 15 100

Figure 34: The Effect of the Dictionary Use on the Students’ Reading Comprehension

In this question, we aim at finding out the teachers’ opinions about the effect of

dictionary use on the students’ reading comprehension. The results above indicate that the

high percentage (80%) agreed upon the fact that checking up the dictionary each time do

interrupt the students’ reading comprehension. While a low ratio (20%) have an opposite

view. We conclude that teachers believe that dictionaries may interrupt the students’

thinking and make them passive readers. This raises more the importance of guessing from

context strategy since it involves students within the text and urges them to use their

thinking abilities to get the required ideas which itself results in more active reading.

Q15- Ignoring new words facilitates more reading comprehension?

a) - Yes b) - No

80

20

Yes No

No Yes

80

Table 35: The Effect of Ignoring New Words on the Students’ Reading Comprehensoin.

Option N %

Yes 04 26, 67

No 11 73, 33

Total 15 100

Figure 34: The Effect of the Ignoring New Words on the Students’ Reading

Comprehension.

We moved on to another strategy to know its effect on the students’ reading

comprehension from the teachers’ perspective. This strategy is word-ignorance. In this

respect, the majority of them (73, 33%) claimed that this strategy does not facilitate their

students’ reading comprehension; rather it hinders it. On the other hand, the rest of our

sample (26, 67%) stated that this strategy does facilitate reading comprehension. Their

reasons for these opinions will be presented in the following question.

Q16-Whatever your answer, justify it

Teachers gave many reasons for their opinions about the effect of word-ignorance

strategy on the students’ reading comprehension. Teachers who agreed that it facilitates

reading comprehension claimed that it develops the learners’ cognitive abilities to deduce

from the context the general idea rather than focusing on each word meaning in isolation.

Whereas the other teachers who see that it hinders reading comprehension rather than

facilitating it claimed that ignoring new words does not assure a full comprehension of the

text; rather it hinders it because to understand the read text, it is necessary to understand

nearly all the words that contribute in building the general meaning of the text. These

26,67

73,33

Yes No

No Yes

81

results indicate that this strategy is not the welcomed one since students unconsciously may

ignore the key words which are the basis for comprehension. Therefore, we may deduce

that instead of ignoring words, an alternative is more effective workable that is the use of

context. This has impelled us to raise the following question.

Q17- Guessing the meaning of new words can be done via: (You may choose more than

one if necessary.)

a) - The use of prefixes, suffixes, and roots.

b) - The use of comparison and contrast clues.

c) - Restatement clues.

d) - Definition clues.

e) - Punctuation clues.

Table 36: Teachers’ Opinions about the Kinds of Contextual Clues to be Used by

Students.

Options Ab Bd Ac abc abd abcd abcde Total

Numbers 2 1 1 1 1 2 7 15

% 13,34 6,67 6,67 6,67 6,67 13,34 46,66 100

Figure 35: Teachers’ Opinions about the Kinds of Contextual Clues to be Used by

Students.

The main aim behind this question is to figure out the teachers’ opinions about the

13,346,67 6,67 6,67 6,67

13,34

46,66

ab bd ac abc abd abcd abcde

abcde abcd abd abc ac bd Colonne3

82

different kinds of contextual clues that may help students to guess the new words’

meanings. The results above showed that all the teachers choose different kinds, but there

is no one here who chooses only one clue in isolation like what students did (see Q22,

students’ questionnaire results). They choose either a combination of two clues (13, 34%

for “a+b”, 6, 67% for ‘b+d’, and 6, 67% for ‘a+c’), or more than two clues (6, 67% for

‘a+b+d’, and 13, 34% for ‘a+b+c+d’); however, the majority of them (46, 66%) selected

all of them (a+b+c+d+e) to be used in guessing the meaning from context. Therefore, we

assume that teachers are aware about the importance of the contextual clues in facilitating

reading comprehension. Those clues are considered as hints that the context provides to

facilitate guessing the meaning of unknown words. So, teachers are fully aware about this

issue, a fact that impels us to call for implementing the reading skill as a separate module to

allow our students to benefit from their teachers’ knowledge and precious instruction in

this respect.

Q18- Do you think that guessed or inferred meaning is better remembered than given

meaning? a) - Yes b) – No

Table 37: Teachers’ opinions about the Retention of Guessed and Given Meanings.

Option N %

Yes 12 80

No 3 20

Total 15 100

83

Figure 36: Teachers’ Opinions about the Retention of Guessed and Given Meanings.

The results presented on both table 38 and figure 38 are obtained from teachers to know

their opinions about whether guessed meaning is better retained than given meaning. The

results show that the majority of them (80%) asserted that guessed meanings are better

remembered than given ones, and only 20% stated the opposite view. That is to say,

engaging students in a critical thinking to deduce the meaning of unclear words results in a

better retention of these words than ready-made meanings. Therefore, we assume that

guessing involves students in a problem solving process to depict the appropriate meaning,

and this in turn develops their cognitive ability to store information and remember them

later on. These results correspond to what we stated in the literature review and confirm it.

(see the literature review, “Readers’ cognitive processes”).

Q19- According to you, using the contextual clues to guess the meaning of the

unknown words facilitates your students’ reading comprehension?

a) - Yes b) - No

Table 38: Teachers’ Views about the Role of Guessing from Context Strategy in Reading

Comprehension.

Option N %

Yes 14 93,33

No 1 6,67

Total 15 100

80

20

Yes No

No Yes

84

Figure 37: Teachers’ Views about the Role of Guessing from Context Strategy

in Reading Comprehension.

This question targeted our aim which is the teachers’ opinions and attitudes about the

importance of contextual clues to guess the meaning of unknown words, and whether it

facilitates the students’ reading comprehension. We found that only one teacher (6, 67%)

seem to disagree with this fact. While 93, 33% out of the whole sample agreed on it.

Therefore, we may deduce that these results confirm our hypothesis about the role that

contextual guessing may play in facilitating the students’ reading comprehension.

Q20- If yes, please explain

To know the teachers’ main reasons about their previous views (Q19), we asked them

this question. In fact, teachers gave many reasons regarding this issue. Teachers claimed

that a good reader is the one who can use the context to guess the meaning of new words

because using this strategy will develop the students’ comprehension since they will move

on beyond the word-decoding level to deducing and illustrating the meaning of new words.

In addition, guessing strategy helps learners to engage in more active reading and compels

them to use more critical thinking which paves the way to more comprehension and more

retention of the vocabulary learnt; rather than checking up the dictionary each time which

interrupts their reading comprehension. They clearly stated that the learner needs to know

the context because knowing the meaning of isolated words is not sufficient. Therefore, we

assume that guessing the meaning of words is a skill; if developed, it will surely help

students to learn the target language easily. However, the teacher who has a negative view

stated that guessed meaning is not permanent if it is compared with the dictionary meaning.

Consequently, we may notice that the advantages of this strategy (guessing) surpass its

disadvantages. Thus, this highlights again the importance of drawing the students’ attention

93,33

6,67

Yes No

Yes No

85

to its use to facilitate their reading comprehension and to teach them about its use in real

educational situations, i.e, by giving “reading” a solid status in our programmes.

5.2.4. Section Four: Further comments or suggestions

Q21- Any further suggestions

Among fifteen (15) teachers, only two of them answered this question. The first teacher

stated that guessing the meaning from context ensures better reading; it fosters them to

deduce rather than being passive readers. Whereas the second teacher claimed that

contextual clues are very important for reading comprehension. Thus, students should use

the context to understand texts about unfamiliar topics which may be full of unfamiliar

words. Therefore, we conclude that teachers confirm the importance of guessing strategy in

facilitating students’ reading comprehension.

5.2.5. Discussion of the Results

The analysis of the teachers’ questionnaire reveals many results. We have found out

that the majority of our teachers are experienced. Most of them have been teaching for

more than ten (10) years (Q2). This means that their views will be efficient in validating

our study. The results of (Q6) revealed that most teachers evaluate their students’ reading

comprehension as “poor”. This may be explained by the absence of this module as a

separate module that makes the students’ main concern to develop only their speaking and

writing skills neglecting the importance of reading in learning a language. This also may

relate to the difficulty students find while reading (Q7) due to both the students’ lack of

interest and lack of vocabulary knowledge. Moreover, (Q9) reveals the importance of

vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension that no one denied. Therefore, facing

vocabulary problems may affect the rate of comprehension (Q10). As a result, this

necessitates the teachers’ role in helping students to deal with these problems by

implementing different strategies especially “guessing from context” which was the main

concern of the following questions.

Question (13) therefore, confirmed the importance of “Contextual-Guessing strategy”

in facilitating reading comprehension. This is clearly demonstrated in (Q17) which

indicates that the context is rich of clues that can be considered as hints for the learner to

guess the meaning of unknown words. The last three questions (18, 19, and 20) illustrate

the most advantages of this strategy.

As a conclusion, the obtained results confirmed the usefulness of contextual guessing

strategy in facilitating the learners’ reading comprehension along with the hope of having

an independent module dedicated to the teaching of the “reading skill” in order to obtain

86

more beneficial results.

Conclusion

This chapter is the practical part of our study; it was devoted to the description, the

analysis, and the discussion of the two questionnaires’ results that were given to both

students and teachers. The analysis of the results reveals that teachers believe that their

students’ reading comprehension is poor. This may be due to the absence of reading as a

separate module in their department which makes them uninterested in reading. Moreover,

both teachers and students claimed that students find reading as a difficult skill, and they

related this difficulty to vocabulary related problems. Thus, a strong relationship between

reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge was supported. That is to say,

vocabulary problems may affect the rate of the students’ reading comprehension.

Consequently, to deal with these problems, students should apply certain strategies to

facilitate their reading comprehension. Importantly, the ‘contextual-guessing strategy’ was

viewed by both teachers and students to be the most important one that facilitates their

reading comprehension.

87

GENERAL CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Throughout this dissertation, we have attempted to investigate whether students and

teachers in the English Department at L’arbi Ben M’hidi University are aware about the

importance of contextual-guessing strategy in facilitating students’ reading comprehension.

In the first chapter, we tackled reading, its definition, types and models, reading

comprehension, and the most difficulties that students may face while reading. In the

second section, we tackled the issue of vocabulary knowledge and its importance in reading

comprehension; also we discussed the importance of strategy-training instruction in EFL

classrooms; moving to our focus of the study in which we discussed the most employed

strategies to deal with vocabulary problems while reading. However, our emphasis was put

on the contextual-guessing strategy. In our literature review, we found that all reading

comprehension researchers agreed on the fact that guessing from context strategy is the

most important strategy to deal with new words while reading since the context is rich of

clues that help the reader to guess the meaning of those words, and words are better

remembered when presented in context as well as it develops students to be active learners.

This was investigated in our practical part.

For our practical part, one means of data collection has been used, the questionnaire.

We have handed two questionnaires, one for students and another for teachers. We aimed

at gathering data about both teachers and students’ perceptions regarding different issues.

First of all, the current level of students’ reading comprehension. Second, the role of

vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension. Third, the most important strategies

students employ to deal with vocabulary problems, and finally, the importance of

contextual-guessing strategy in facilitating students’ reading comprehension.

The obtained findings in the questionnaires confirm our hypothesis about the

importance of the contextual-guessing strategy in facilitating reading comprehension. First,

teachers confirm that students are unaware about the importance of reading which results in

a poor level of their reading comprehension. Second, both teachers/students seem to

support the role of vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension asserting that

students’ reading comprehension problems are related to their lack of vocabulary

knowledge. Third, to deal with these problems, both teachers and students believe that

learners have to employ “guessing from context” to ensure more comprehension. We can

deduce that teachers and students are aware about the worthiness of contextual guessing

strategy in making reading comprehension easier. Yet, students are in need to get more

knowledge about the use of this strategy with the teachers’ help in order to raise their

interest in reading and to improve their comprehension. All this cannot be achieved only if

88

a separate module of reading is included in their curriculum.

Based on both findings of the questionnaires as well as our literature review, and in

order to raise the students’ interest about reading and facilitate their reading

comprehension, we recommend the following:

1- Reading should be taken seriously as equal as the other skills in our department, and

this can only happen via including it as a separate module in the curriculum.

2- Teachers should play a great role in raising their students’ interest towards reading

and its importance in learning a language.

3- Teachers should help their students to overcome their vocabulary problems as they

read by teaching them the important strategies that facilitate their reading

comprehension especially the contextual-guessing strategy.

4- Students should trained in using the contextual-guessing strategy to facilitate their

reading comprehension to use it consciously and appropriately. They should also be

taught the different kinds of contextual clues that help them in guessing the meaning

of unknown words.

We hope that our study highlights the main reasons that make the students’ reading

difficult, i.e, the lack of interest and vocabulary problems. We also hope that we have

attracted the attention of decision-makers for including reading in our department as a

separate module. This is to help students overcome their vocabulary problems, raise their

interest in reading and help them to use the most effective strategies for comprehending

any read material especially via strategy-training programmes. In addition, including

reading in the curriculum will give teachers an opportunity to teach students the

appropriate strategies in order to facilitate their reading comprehension especially by using

the contextual guessing strategy.

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Nanyang Technological Institute. 375-380.

APPENDICES

Appendix 01 : STUDENTS’ QUESTIONNAIRE

Appendix 02 : TEACHERS’ QUESTIONNAIRE

Appendix 03 : Methodology Programme 1st Year

Appendix 01

Students’ Questionnaire

Dear students,

This Questionnaire is a part of research work. It aims at investigating the importance of

contextual-guessing strategy use to improve students’ reading comprehension. Your answers

will help us to enrich our research and validate its results. We hope that you give us your

attention and interest.

Please tick or put numbers inside the appropriate box (es) or answer in the space

provided.

Thank you very much for your cooperation.

Miss, BOUNAB Samira

University of Oum El Bouaghi

Department of English

To third year LMD Students

Section One: General Information

Q1- How long have you been studying English?

…………………………………………………….

Q2- How do you consider your level in English?

a) - Good

b) - Average

c) - Low

Section Two: Reading and Reading Comprehension

Q3- Which language skill would you like to master first: (Organize them in terms of

importance from 1 to 4).

a) - Speaking.

b) – Listening.

c) - Reading.

d) – Writing.

Q4- Do you read in English?

a) - Yes

b) - No

Q5- If yes, explain why?

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………….

Q6- How often do you read in English?

a) - Frequently

b) - Sometimes

c) – Rarely

Q7- Do you set clear objectives before you begin any reading text?

a) - Yes

b) - No

Q8- Whatever your choice, please explain it

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

Q9- How do you consider reading in English?

a) - Difficult

b) - Easy

Q10- If you choose -a- , please justify ……………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

…………………………………………

Q11- To what extent is vocabulary knowledge important in reading comprehension?

a) - important

b) - not important

Q12- Do you face vocabulary problems while reading?

a) - Yes

b) - No

Q13- If yes, are these problems related to:

a) - Unfamiliar words.

b) - Unfamiliar topic.

c) - Both of them

Q14- Do you stop at any unknown word to check up its meaning?

a) - Yes

b) - No

Q15- Whatever your choice, please justify your answer

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

Q16- According to you, reading comprehension relies on: (You can choose more than one

option).

a) - Information processing abilities (cognitive abilities).

b) - The meaning of words.

c) - Previous knowledge about the topic.

d) - All of them.

Section Three: Vocabulary Learning Strategies (Context-guessing strategy)

Q17- When you get across new words, do you: please ‘rank’ your choices from the most

important (1) to the less important (3).

a) - Use the Dictionary.

b) - Ignore these words.

c) - Use the context to guess their meanings.

Q18- The overuse of dictionary will interrupt your thinking which may affect your reading

comprehension.

a) - Agree

b) - Disagree

Q19- Whatever your answer, Justify it………………………………………………………

....………………………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………………

Q20- Will you comprehend more if you ignore new words?

a) - Yes

b) - No

Q21- Whatever your choice, explain it

.......………………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………………..

………………………………………………………………………………………

Q22- Which of the following clues do you use to guess the meaning of new words:

(You can choose more than one if necessary)

a) - Look at prefixes, suffixes, and roots

b) - Look at comparison and contrast clues

c) - Restatement clues (expressions like in other words, that is to say …)

d) - Definition clues

e) - Punctuation clues

Q23- Do you think that guessed meanings are better retained than given meanings?

a) - Yes

b) - No

Q24- According to you, using the contextual clues to guess the meaning of new words

facilitates reading comprehension?

a) - Yes

b) – No

Q25- Do your teachers encourage you to use the context-guessing strategy while reading?

a) - Yes

b) - No

Q26- Would you like to be trained in using this strategy?

a) - Yes

b) - No

Q27- Any further suggestions

………………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………………

Appendix 02

Teachers’ Questionnaire

Dear teacher,

This Questionnaire is a part of research work. It aims at investigating the importance of

contextual-guessing strategy use to improve students’ reading comprehension. Your answers

will help us to enrich our research and validate its results. We hope that you give us your

attention and interest.

You are kindly requested to answer this questionnaire. Please tick or put numbers inside

the appropriate box (es) or answer in the space provided.

Thank you very much for your cooperation.

Miss, BOUNAB Samira.

University of Oum El Bouaghi.

Department of English.

Section One: General Information

Q1- Degree held(s):

a) - BA (licence)

b) - Master

c) - Magister

d) - Ph. D (Doctorate)

Q2- How long have you been teaching English? ………………….

Section Two: Reading and Reading Comprehension

Q3- Which language skill is the most difficult for your students to master?

(You can choose more than one option)

a) - Listening

b) - Speaking

c) - Reading

d) - Writing

Q4- Please, clarify your answer ……………………………………………………….

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Q5- Do you encourage your students to read in English?

a) - Yes□

b) - No□

Q6- How do you rate your students reading comprehension?

a) - Good

b) - Average

c) - Poor

Q7- Do you think that your students find reading?

a) – Difficult

b) – Easy

Q8- If you choose -a- , please justify your answer

……………………………………………………………………………………….

………………………………………………………………………………………

Q9- How do you evaluate vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension?

a) - Very important.

b) - Important.

c) - Less important.

d) - Not important.

Q10- Do your students encounter vocabulary problems while reading?

a) - Yes

b) - No

Q11- If you choose -a- , are these problems related to:

a) - Unfamiliar words

b) - Unfamiliar topics

c) - Both of them

Q12- Do you think that encountering new words while reading affect the rate of your

students’ reading comprehension?

a) - Yes b) - No

Section Two: Vocabulary Learning Strategies (The context- Guessing Strategy)

Q13- When your students encounter new words, do you advise them to:

Please rank your choices from the most important (1) to the less important (3)

a) - Use the Dictionary.

b) - Ignore these words.

c) - Use the context to guess their meanings.

Q14- Do you think that checking up the dictionary interrupts your students’ thinking and

affects their reading comprehension?

a) - Yes

b) - No

Q15- Ignoring new words facilitates more reading comprehension?

a) - Yes

b) - No

Q16-Whatever your answer, justify it

.......………………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………………..

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

Q17- Guessing the meaning of new words can be done via: (You may choose more than one

if necessary)

a) - The use of prefixes, suffixes, and roots.

b) - The use of comparison and contrast clues.

c) - Restatement clues.

d) - Definition clues.

e) - Punctuation clues.

f) - Others (please specify) …………………………………………………

Q18- Do you think that guessed or inferred meaning is better remembered than given

meaning?

a) - Yes

b) - No

Q19- According to you, using the contextual clues to guess the meaning of the unknown

words improves your students’ reading comprehension?

a) - Yes

b) - No

Q20- If yes, please explain

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………

Section Four: Further comments or suggestions

Q21- Any further suggestions

………………………………………………………………...…………………………………

………………………………………………………….......……………………………………

…………………………………………………………….

University of Oum Elbouaghi

Department of English

Methodology Programme 1st Year

Semester One

Part One Introduction to the concept of Learning

1.What is Learning?

2.Seven approaches to learning

2.1 2.1 Learning is an advanture

2.2 2.2 Use many senses

2.3 2.3Identify what attracts you

2.4 2.4Use active learning

2.5 2.5Take responsibility for your own learning

2.6 2.6Trust in your own intelligence

2.7 2.7 Recognize your own learning style: Are you

2.7.1 2.7.1An auditory learner?

2.7.1 2.7.2 A visual learner?

2.7.3 2.7.3 A Kinesthetic learner?

2.7.4 2.7.4 An intrapersonal learner?

2.7.5 2.7.5An interpersonal learner?

2.8 Effective learning Vs Virtous learning

2.9 Personal management strategies

2.9.1 2.9.1 Motivation

2.9.2 2.9.2 Concentration

2.9.3 2.9.3 Exam anxiety

Part Two 1.Keeping a journal

1.2 The importance of your own journal

1.3 What do you write in your journal?

1.4 Effective journal use

2. Using Dictionary

2.1 What is a dictionary?

2.2 Dictionary Types

2.3 Dictionary parts

2.4 How to use a dictionary

Semester Two Taking Notes

1.Taking notes from lectures

2. Mechanics of note-taking

3. The process of note-taking: Before, during and after the lecture

3.1 3.1Branching notes

3.2 3.2 List notes

4. Taking notes from textbooks: Reading

4.1 Quick selective reading strategies

4.1.1 4.1.1 Skimming

4.1.2 4.1.2 Scanning

4.1.3 4.1.3Using the title

4.1.4 4.1.4Surveying a book

5. Careful reading

5.1 Reading for the main idea

5.2 Using contextual clues

5.3 Stems and affixes

5.4 Using SQ3R technique

Résumé

Lire, c’est une activité qui aide au développement des sens telle que parler, lire, écrire et

même écouter, c’est la source du vocabulaire et son essentiel, malgré son importance

l’Université l’Arbi Ben M’Hidi d’Oum El Bouaghi et précisément le département d’anglais

ne lui consacre pas autant de temps qu’il ne fau. Ce qui a engendré une lacune dans la lecture

des étudiants en ne s’y intéressant pas c’est devenus une tache des plus difficiles, leur

faiblesse en vocabulaire peut aussi affecter leur compréhension et lecture. Certaines stratégies

ont été mise en place pour traiter ce problème qui est la compréhension en lecture en effet des

études ont montré que la devinette contextuelle est la stratégie la plus efficace pour aider les

étudiants à lire et écrire mieux. Et notre but contribue à donner de l’importance à l’existence

dans la devinette contextuelle pour faciliter la lecture et compréhension notre objectif est de

faire découvrir aux étudiants et enseignants l’importance de cette stratégie. Deux questions

ont été posées pour compléter cette étude. La première est adressée à la soixante-troisième

classe de LMD de département d’anglais à L’arbi Ben M’Hidi durant l’année académique

2013/2014 d’avoir une idée sur le point de vue des étudiants sur la lecture, compréhension et

problème de vocabulaire, et l’importance et de l’effet de la devinette contextuelle pour

résoudre ces problèmes et facilité la lecture et la compréhension. Quand a la deuxième

question est adressée a 15 enseignants du même département l’objectif est de connaitre leurs

réponses sur les difficultés que les étudiants confrontent comme la lecture et la

compréhension, et de savoir si cette stratégie aboutie au but qui est de facilité et traité ces

difficultés. Et le résultat a confirmé et approuvé notre hypothèse que la devinette contextuelle

facilite la lecture a aussi proposer un nombre de recommandations

ملخصال

وتوسيع ذلك ھو مصدر المعرفة ك. بارة عن منصة لتطوير مھارات أخرى: التحدث و الكتابة وا�ستماعالقراءة ھي ع

مھيدي ، أم بن ربيسم اللغة ا<نجليزية في جامعة العفي ق له نه تم إعطاء القليل من ا�ھتمامالمفردات. ومع ذلك فا

جنبية . معظم الطKب يجدون صعوبة اG حو أھمية ھذه المھارة في تعلم لغةالمتعلمين نيؤثر على وعي قد ھذا .البواقي

قراءتھم الذي ھو في المقابل الھدف النھائي لالفھم قد تؤثر على المفردات تلك .الجديدة القراءة بسبب عدم معرفتھم المفردات

من المھم أن تعتمد استراتيجيات معينة فانه القراءة والفھم " للطKب " أي وراء القراءة. وبالتالي، لتسھيل ھذه المھارة

ھي من بين أھم 'التخمين السياقية'قد أظھرت العديد من الدراسات أن استراتيجية اقع، للتعامل مع ھذه المشاكل . في الو

ھدف من خKل ھذه اGطروحة الىالفھم أفضل. لھذا السبب ، نقراءة والا�ستراتيجيات التي يمكن أن تساعد الطKب على

المعلمين بشأن أھمية ھذه ا�ستراتيجية و أن نرى إلى أي مدى قد تساعد و الطKبتصورات و اراءأن نعرف عن

أول حررنا اثنين من ا�ستبيانات. أعطي<نجاز ھذه الدراسة ، والمتعلمين على تطوير القراءة والفھم الخاصة بھم. لذلك،

مھيدي ، خKل العام الدراسي بن ربيالع في جامعة في قسم اللغة ا<نجليزية LMDسنة الثالثة ال طالب من واحد إلى ستين

، وأھمية الجديدة الطKب بشأن القراءة والفھم، مشاكل المفرداتنظر وجھات ا ھو الحصول على. ھدفن 2013/2014

اعطىا�ستبيان الثاني امال تسھيل القراءة والفھم الخاصة بھم. من أج ھذه المشاكلاستراتيجية التخمين السياقية للتعامل مع

لدى . ويھدف إلى التحقق من ردودھا بشأن صعوبات القراءة والفھم الفرع) معلما ومعلمة من نفس 15خمسة عشر ( ل

شاكل المتعلقة الم منطKبھم ، وأھمية استراتيجية التخمين السياقية في تسھيل ھذه المھارة ومساعدتھم على التعامل

على سھلتالمفردات. النتائج التي تم الحصول عليھا في ھذه الدراسة تؤكد فرضيتنا بأن استراتيجية التخمين السياقية ب

الدراسة أيضا عددا من التوصيات . تاقترح كماالطKب القراءة والفھم .