Hiệu quả của việc đoán từ qua ngữ cảnh của học sinh lớp 10 không chuyên Anh Trường trung học phổ thông chuyên Nguyễn Trãi, Hải Dương

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ABSTRACT
Guessing the meanings of unknown words from context has been considered to
be an effective skill in vocabulary acquisition and language skills development. In order
to study the effectiveness of the guesswork, this research investigated the guessing
ability of fifty-nine non-English 10
th
graders at Nguyen Trai Gifted High School, Hai
Duong, through two tests. A pre-test was given to students to identify their guessing
ability before training. After the training period, which lasted three weeks, the students
were required to do a post-test to find out their improvement in the guessing ability. In
addition, the author surveyed ten English teachers at Nguyen Trai Gifted High School to
get their opinions on teaching and training the guessing strategy. The results indicated
that the ability to guess is useful for students to deal with reading texts containing new
words. Finally, the findings were discussed, and some suggestions and implications for
applying the guessing skill in language teaching and learning were also proposed at the
end of the thesis.



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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
EFL: English as a Foreign Language
ELT: English Language Teaching

LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES
Chart 1: The pre-test results
Chart 2: Teachers’ ways of dealing with new words
Chart 3: The frequency of using the guessing skill
Chart 4: The problems relating to using the guessing skill
Chart 5: Teachers’ solutions to the problems
Chart 6: The post-test results
Table 1: The students’ ability to use the guessing techniques
Table 2: The effectiveness of the guessing techniques

















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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Declaration …………………………………………………………….…………… … i
Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………… ii

Abstract …………………………………………………………………………… … iii
List of abbreviations ………………………………………………………………….… .iv
List of charts, and tables ………………………………………………………… ……. iv
Table of contents …………………………………………………………… …………. .v

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale ………………………………………………………………………… … 1
2. Aims of the study ………………………………………………………………………2
3. Research questions …… …………………………………………………………… 2
4. Scope of the study ……………………………………………………………………2
5. Significance of the study ……………………………………………………………….2
6. Methods of the study ……… ………………………………………………………… 3
7. Design of the study ……………………………………………………………………. 3
PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1. Definition of context ……………… ……………………………………… …… 4
1.2. Guessing the meanings of unknown words from context as a technique of vocabulary
teaching and learning …………….………………………………………………… … 5
1.3. Some previous studies on guessing the meanings of unknown words from contexts 8
1.4. Guessing strategies …………………………………………………………… … 10
1.5. Learner-strategy training …………………………… ……………………….…… 12
Chapter summary …………………………………………………………………… …16
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY
2.1. The setting of the study and participants………………………………………… 17
2.1.1. The school …………………………………………………………………….…. 17
2.1.2. Participants ………………………………………………………………………. 17
2.2. Three main stages of the action research ……………………………………… …. 18
2.2.1. Pre – Improvement stage ……………………………………………….……… 18
Step 1: Identifying the problem ……………………………………………………….…18

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2.2.1.1. Giving a pre-test to evaluate students’ guessing
ability ………….……….…… 18
2.2.1.2. Conducting an informal interview about the way the students guessed …….…18
Step 2: Finding causes of the problem ……………………………………………….…19
2.2.1.3. Consulting with colleagues …………………………………………………… 19
2.2.1.4. Reading professional books/ journals for ideas and suggestions ……………… 19
2.2.2. Trying – out stage ………………………………………………………… ……19
Step 3: Designing strategies for improvements ……………………………………… 19
Step 4: Trying out strategies and making notes on what happened in the class …………21
2.2.3. Post – Improvement stage …………………………………………………… …22
Step 5: Evaluating the try – out ………………………………………………………….22
2.2.3.1. Giving a post-test to evaluate the students’ improvement ……………… …… 22
2.2.3.2. Designing a questionnaire for students to identify the techniques that they have
used to guess the meanings of unknown words ………………………………… …….22
2.3.3. Conducting an informal interview to identify the changes …………………… 23
2.3. Data analysis procedure ………………………………………………………….… 23
Chapter summary ……………………………………………………………………… 23
CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
3.1. The results of the instruments before the training period …………………… …… 24
3.1.1. The results of the pre-test …………………………………………………………24
3.1.2 The results of the interview ………………………… ………………………… 25
3.1.3. The results of the questionnaire for the teachers …………………………….… 26
3.2. The results of the instruments after the training period ……………………………. 29
3.2.1 The results of the post-test ……………………………………………………… 29
3.2.2. The results of interviews ……………………………………………………… 31
3.2.3 The results of the questionnaire for the students ………………………………….33
Chapter summary ……………………………………………………………………… 36
PART THREE: CONCLUSION
1. Summary of the findings ……………………………………………………… …… 38

2. Conclusions …………………………………………………………………… …… 39
3. Limitations of the study …………………………………………………………… 39
4. Suggestions for further research ………………… ……………………………… 40

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References ……………………………………………………………………………… 41

Appendix A: Text for the pre-test ……………………………………… ……………… I
Appendix B: Questionnaire for teachers …………………………………………………II
Appendix C: Training lesson 1 …………………………………………………….…… III
Appendix D: Training lesson 2 ……………………………………………………… VIII
Appendix E: Training lesson 3 ……………………………………………………….… X
Appendix F: Text for the post-test …………………………………………………… XI
Appendix G: Questionnaire for students …………………… …………………… XII



1
PART ONE: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
Vocabulary acquisition has always received a great deal of attention in any language
learning process. In English language learning, vocabulary is extremely important as there are
many words in the English language. Reading texts are often potential sources for students to
improve their vocabulary stocks. While reading a text, students encounter new words and to
comprehend the content of the text they have to know the meanings of these words. The most
common phenomenon that can be observed in non-major classes of English in Nguyen Trai
Gifted High School is that when students see an unknown word, they will turn to bilingual
dictionaries or ask their teacher for its meaning. This results in students’ over-reliance on the
bilingual dictionaries and their teachers while the reading speed may be slowed down. More
seriously, they may easily forget the meaning of the unknown word as they have no difficulty

getting its meaning. In fact, the comprehension of words involves a series of skills or activities,
one of which is guessing the meaning of unknown words from context. This reading strategy
has a long history of research with the great majority of studies demonstrating its value. It has
often been suggested that learning vocabulary through context should be employed as the
main approach to enhancing vocabulary knowledge. A number of researchers such as Clarke
and Nation (1980) and Gairns and Redman (1986) have claimed that to learn words in context
and not in isolation is an effective vocabulary learning strategy. Therefore, enabling students
to derive word meanings with the help of contextual clues has become a teacher’s main task in
order to increase students’ vocabulary. Despite the fact that guessing the meanings of
unknown words from context has proved to be an invaluable strategy in the learning of
English vocabulary, it has not been formally and carefully introduced into English classes in
high schools in Vietnam. Some research on reading strategies has mentioned this strategy as a
good one but little attempt has been made to instruct teachers in training students with this
skill; and more importantly, little has been made to investigate the effectiveness of this
strategy on the improvement of students’ proficiency of vocabulary and reading
comprehension. Therefore, I decided to carry out this study to explore whether this strategy
was suitable for my students and if it was suitable, how I, as an English teacher, could do to
develop my students’ guessing ability.

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2. Aims of the study
The study was carried out to:
(1). Find out how effective guessing the meaning of unknown words from context was.
(2). Suggest some realistic and appropriate pedagogical implications to improve
students’ ability in guessing the meaning of unknown words from contexts.
3. Research questions
To achieve the aims and objectives of the thesis, the following research questions were
proposed:
(1) How effective is guessing the meanings of unknown words from context?
(2) In what conditions are students more successful in guessing the meanings of unknown

words from context?
(3) What factors limit the effectiveness of guessing unknown words from context?
4. Scope of the study
The main purpose of the study is to find out how much students can do with the
guesswork and to help them improve the skill of guessing the meanings of unknown words
from context.
The study only focuses on non-English 10
th
graders at Nguyen Trai Gifted High School,
Hai Duong, so the results of the study are not applied for all students at the school.
5. Significance of the study
Guessing the meanings of unknown words from context has been approved by many
researchers as an effective strategy in improving learners’ vocabulary. However, there has
been little practical attempt in applying this strategy to classrooms due to the ignorance of
both teachers as well as learners of its advantages. For that reason, it is hoped that this study
will provide both theoretical and practical foundation for the teachers and learners to make use
of this strategy while teaching and learning the reading skill. Furthermore, this is a good
chance for the teachers and learners at Nguyen Trai Gifted High School to assess the
effectiveness of a useful strategy – the strategy for guessing the meanings of unknown words
from context. Hopefully, this strategy will make students more confident when encountering
new words in reading texts and motivate them to enrich their vocabulary knowledge.


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6. Methods of the study
With reference to its characteristics, this thesis can be categorized as an action research.
Both qualitative and quantitative methods would be employed to carry out the study. The
following methods were applied to collect data for this study:
Two tests were used to evaluate the students’ guessing ability before and after the
training period.

A survey questionnaire was specifically designed for the teachers of English to find out
their opinions on the ways to teach students to guess. Another questionnaire was given to the
students to identify the techniques which they had used to guess.
In order to get further information about the ways the students had used to guess,
informal interviews with students were also conducted before and after the training period.
7. Design of the study
The study consists of three main parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion.
Part 1: Introduction presents the rationale, the aims of the study, the research questions,
the scope of the study, the significance of the study, the methodology and the design of the
study.
Part 2: Development consists of Chapter one “Literature Review”, Chapter two
“Methodology” and Chapter three “Findings and Discussion”.
Chapter one, “Literature Review”, aims at presenting the theoretical background for
the thesis. The most important notions related to guessing the meanings of unknown words
from context are introduced.
Chapter two, namely “Methodology”, describes the study and the methodology
underlying the research. This chapter provides the background information of the instruments
used to collect the data, the procedure of data collection and the procedure of data analysis.
Chapter three, “Findings and Discussions”, presents findings and discussions on the
study and some suggestions for teaching and using the guessing skill.
Part 3: Conclusion restates the main points discussed in the study, some conclusions
drawn from the findings, limitations of the study and suggestions for further study.



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PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
In this chapter, the author will clarify several concepts concerning the strategy of
guessing the meanings of unknown words from context. In addition, different issues relating to

this strategy will also be presented.
1.1. Definition of context
In linguistics, the term “context” is a widely used concept by many researchers; however,
defining it is not as easy as it may seem. A number of scholars have given some definitions for
this term.
As Nation and Coady (1988:102) put it, “context is also referred to as morphological,
syntactic and discourse information in a given test, which can be classified and described in
terms of general features”. Gough (1984, as cited in Dycus, 1997) provides a similar but
clearer view of context that at a basic level, context can be seen as information and in turn,
information reduces uncertainty. In reading, context can be defined as information that
reduces uncertainty about the elements of a text, their meanings, and the meaning of a text as a
whole.
Nevertheless, of the many theoretical descriptions of the elements and nature of context,
Bialystok (1983, as cited in Dycus, 1997) offers a broad sense of context. She proposes that
context exists in relation and proportion to the reader’s implicit knowledge (intuitive and
unanalyzed knowledge of the second language), other knowledge (knowledge of other
languages and world knowledge), and context (linguistic and physical aspects of a text which
provide clues to meaning). From this view, context is clearly not an absolute presence in a text
but is created by the reader, and is therefore influenced by the reader’s linguistic and world
knowledge.
Bialystok’s point of view is supported by Dycus (1997) that traditionally context and
meaning were seen as a given, existing fully and completely in any properly written text, and
the key to using it was linguistic knowledge. This view is claimed by cognitive theorists to
place too much emphasis on linear, bottom-up processing. Today, different definitions of
context include language knowledge and emphasize the role played by high-level knowledge
sources and personal experiences. It is useful to note the commonly used general distinction

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between two types of context, i.e. local context and global context. Local context is provided
by intrasentential information while global context is given by intersentential to discourse

level information and world knowledge.
In short, context includes both linguistic and non-linguistic aspects. Therefore, in order to
derive the meaning of a word from context, learners need to utilize not only the information
presented in the text but also their general knowledge of the topic discussed in the text.
1.2. Guessing the meanings of unknown words from context as a technique of vocabulary
teaching and learning
Learning words via guessing from context is the most important of all sources of
vocabulary learning. This is particular true for native speakers learning their first language. It
should also be true for second language learners. Nagy(1997:76) argues that although second-
language learners are less effective than native speakers at using context, they may have a
greater need to use context. The reason is that they encounter unfamiliar words quite more
often than first language readers and are more expected to encounter unfamiliar meanings of
words. Obviously, second language learners are able and have more opportunities to learn
words from context.
It is claimed by Nation (2001:240) that context plays an important part in
comprehending the meaning of a word. At the simplest level, the unknown word may
represent a familiar concept, and so a new label for that familiar concept is being learned. If
the concept is an unfamiliar one, then both the concept and the label need to be learned. There
is plenty of experimental evidence to show learners’ difficulty with new concept. Although the
word form and its meaning are among the most important things to know about a word, there
are many other kinds of information that can be learned from context that are important in the
receptive and productive use of the word. These include the part of speech of the word, its
collocations, the things it can refer to and the various forms the word can take. These different
kinds of information are all closely related to each other and come together to enrich a
learner’s knowledge of a word. For example, the range of collocations that a word has helps
specify its meaning; the grammatical patterns a word can take may affect its grammatical
functions, its meaning and its range of collocations. A very important value of context in
learning vocabulary is that a variety of contexts will evoke a variety of enriching instantiations.

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Pair-associated learning is not likely to do this. Each paired-associate repetition is likely to
strengthen but not enrich. There is experimental evidence to show that providing a sentence
context or several contexts, as well as a definition, helps word learning. Gipe and Arnold
(1979, as cited in Nation, 2001:241) find contexts and definitions to be superior to synonyms
or short definitions, a classification task or using the dictionary.
Nagy(1997:76) provides a clearer view on types of knowledge that readers possess in
order to contribute to contextual inference. He distinguishes three types of knowledge:
linguistic knowledge, world knowledge, and strategic knowledge.
Firstly, he claims that much of the information provided by context lies in the
linguistic structure of the context, and its use can depend on the reader’s knowledge of the
structure. Linguistic knowledge includes syntactic knowledge, vocabulary knowledge, and
word schema, which is knowledge of what constitutes possible word meanings in a language.
The meaning of a word determines its syntactic behavior, and in turn the syntactic behavior of
a word provides crucial information about its meaning. That is why second language learners
can use parts of speech as a clue to the meaning of the unknown words. Another type of
linguistic knowledge contributing to inferring word meanings from context is constraints on
possible word meanings. There is evidence that both children and adults have some sense of
what constitutes a possible, or at least plausible, word meaning.
A second category of knowledge that contributes to effective use of context is world
knowledge. The context that enables a person to infer the meaning of an unfamiliar word must
be construed to consist of the person’s knowledge of the world. In some cases, learning a word
from context simply requires determining which of the several already familiar concepts the
word refers to. In other cases, one may acquire a new concept in the process of learning the
word which labels it.
Strategic knowledge is the third category contributing to effective use of context. It
involves conscious control over cognitive resources. Nagy points out that training students in
the use of context has enhanced students’ ability to infer the meanings of unfamiliar words.
This conclusion is based on results of several studies of both first and second language
learners. The results of such studies make it clear that the process of using information from
context is at least partially amenable to conscious control and offers some promise that

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students’ ability to make use of contextual information can be enhanced through instruction.
The success of these studies highlights the potential efficiency of focusing on strategic
knowledge as strategic knowledge promises large gains in learning from a relatively short
investment of instructional time. Research on comprehension strategies also contributes to the
idea that strategy instruction can be applied to teaching word-learning strategies.
Furthermore, Nation (2001:233) asserts that the proportion of unknown words that can
be guessed from context depends on a number of factors. A critical factor in successful
guessing is the number of unknown words in a text. The optimal ratio of unknown to known
running words, according to Liu and Nation (1985), is two percent coverage, which means one
unknown words in every fifty running words. Studies which use higher densities of unknown
words have shown little successful guessing. Secondly, the estimates of guessing need to be
based on the actual words not known by each learner. This means that the choice of words to
be examined needs to take account of actual learner knowledge and cannot rely on teacher
intuition or the unsystematic choice of words from a text. If the choice of words is carried out
properly, then more readily generalizable statements about the percentage of text coverage and
chances of guessing, or vocabulary size and the chances of guessing can be made. Thirdly,
learner skill is also an important factor in guessing. If learners develop the skill of guessing,
they can guess large numbers of words effectively. Fourthly, learners must be given credit for
guesses that are not 100 percent correct but which make a small but positive contribution to
knowledge of the meaning of the word. Learning by guessing from context is a cumulative
procedure by which learners gradually develop their knowledge of words. It is likely that the
initial meetings with a word in context simply give rise to a vague knowledge of the form of
the word and the awareness that it is unfamiliar and thus should get some attention next time it
occurs. Finally, in discussion of learning from context, it is important to distinguish between
guessing from natural contexts and deliberate learning with specially constructed or chosen
contexts.
In conclusion, acquiring vocabulary knowledge from context requires both linguistic
and extra linguistic knowledge. Guessing the meaning of a word from context involves a

relationship between the situation model and the text model, as well as knowledge of the
nature of the possible mappings between these two things. Moreover, there are a number of

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factors which impinge on the effectiveness of the guessing process that researchers should
take into consideration before conducting any study on this strategy.
1.3. Some previous studies on guessing the meanings of unknown words from contexts.
Being one of the most important strategies in acquiring vocabulary knowledge, the
guessing strategy has been a great concern of many researchers. Many studies have been
carried out and the results have been expressed in both optimistic and pessimistic views.
Seibert (1945, as cited in Nation, 2001:235) “found high rate of success (around 70
percent) in intensive guessing with learners who knew French guessing Spanish words in
context. Obviously, the similarities between these two closely related languages helped the
guessing”. Liu and Nation (1985:40) studied learners’ ability to guess the meaning of
nonsense words used to replace real words at regular intervals in written texts. They found that
success depended on the relative density of unknown words. Where there was only one
nonsense word per twenty-five words, they were easier to guess than when there was one
every ten words. Liu and Nation estimated that at least 85 percent of unknown words could be
guessed by a class of learners working together to pool their relevant knowledge and skills.
Parry’s (1991, as cited in Nation, 2001:235) longitudinal study of four adult learners
guessing from context supports earlier non-native speaker studies in showing reasonable
success in guessing from context: a range of 12 percent to 33 percent of guesses classified as
correct and a range of 51 percent to 69 percent of guesses either partly correct or correct. Most
words found to be unknown were not particularly subject-matter related but were in the
register of formal expository prose.
However, much research has shown large amounts of unsuccessful guessing from
context. Bensoussan and Laufer (1984:29) set a guessing task which learners responded to in
writing and then analyzed how correct the guesses were. The general finding is that learners
very frequently made wrong guesses - if in fact they guessed at all. Wrong guesses resulted
from giving the wrong meaning of a word that had several meanings, translating the individual

morphemes of a word, mistranslating an idiom, and confusing the target word with one that
looked or sounded similar. More generally, learners have been found to make guesses on some
narrow basis, producing an inferred meaning that has little relation to the wider context of the
text. One point needs to be made here is that the study was carried out with learners who had

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been specifically trained to do lexical guessing. Another research procedure, adopted by
Haastrup (1987, 1991), was to form pairs of learners matched according to their proficiency in
the foreign language. The learners worked together to infer the meaning of unknown words,
thus producing introspective "think-aloud" accounts of their reasoning processes. Haastrup,
whose subjects were Danish secondary students learning English, analyzed the clues they used
into three categories: interlingual, intralingual, and contextual. She noted that many of the
introspective accounts were incomplete or difficult to interpret, and so about half of the
subjects were also interviewed individually as soon as they had completed the guessing task in
order to clarify what they had said.
There are some explanations for the poor results of these studies. Nation (2001:236)
states that the poor results “may be partly due to poor design, but it is also the effect of the
cumulative nature of such learning involving only small gains per meeting for most words ”.
Additionally, Xiaolong’s (1988) research suggests that those learners who are good at word
inference also retain the first-encounter contextual meaning of the target words better. He
concludes that there is a link between recalling words and the contexts in which they were
learnt. Dycus (1997) claims that different types of context have different influences on the
guessing effects. He proposes that guessing using local context is superior to guessing using
global context. Because of this, he believes that we should only encourage guessing if clues
are in the immediate context, but that we should also teach when not to guess. Accordingly, if
guessing requires global context, the guessing strategy should be abandoned and the dictionary
or other resources should be used instead. Another researcher, Honeyfield (1977), also stresses
the importance of context by arguing that even with a functional vocabulary of the three
thousand most frequently occurring items in English, learners will still not know around 20
percent of the items they encounter in an unsimplified text. The problem confronting both

teacher and learners is that no course can provide learners with anything like the vocabulary
they will need to comprehend authentic texts. He emphasized that it is, therefore, of
importance to equip students with strategies for inferring the meaning of unknown vocabulary
from the context in which it occurs rather than getting them to undertake the time-consuming
task of memorising long list of words or looking up unknown words in a dictionary which
would make the reading process unbearably slow and tedious.

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From the above discussion, we can see that the success of the studies on guessing the
meanings of unknown words from context depends on a number of factors including the
learners, the teacher’s preparation and the situation where the study is conducted. More
importantly, given the evidence that many learners lack the skill to infer the meaning of
unknown words correctly, there has been surprisingly little research on whether they can be
successful trained to apply it in their process of vocabulary acquisition.
1.4. Guessing strategies
Numerous teachers and researchers advocate teaching students to use a general
strategy for dealing with unknown words in text. Perhaps the most well known strategy is one
described by Clarke and Nation (1980:212) which includes four main steps as follows:
Step 1: Look at the unknown word and decide its part of speech. Is it a noun, a verb, an
adjective, or an adverb?
Step 2: Look at the clause or sentence containing the unknown word. If the unknown
word is a noun, what does this noun do, or what is done to it? And what adjectives describe it?
What verb is it near? If it is a verb, what nouns does it go with? Is it modified by an adverb? If
it is an adjective, what noun does it go with? If it is an adverb, what verb is it modifying?
Step 3: Look at the relationship between the clause or sentence containing the
unknown word and other sentences or paragraphs. Sometimes this relationship will be
signaled by conjunctions like but, because, if, when, or by adverbs like however or as a result.
The possible types of relationship include cause and effect, contrast, time, exemplification,
and summary.
Step 4: Use the knowledge you have gained from steps 1 to 3 to guess the meaning of

the word and check if your guess is correct.
(a) See that the part of speech of your guess is the same as the part of speech of the
unknown word. If it is not the same, then something is wrong with your guess.
(b) Break the unknown word into its prefix, root, and suffix, if possible. If the
meanings of the prefix and root correspond to your guess, it is good. If not, look at your guess
again, but do not change anything if you feel reasonably certain about your guess.
(c) Replace the unknown word with your guess. If the sentence makes sense, your
guess is probably correct.

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Williams (1985, as cited in Walters, 2004:245) proposes a similar strategy and
suggests teaching the strategy explicitly, using “marked-up” texts at first, to show the source
of contextual information, moving on to unmarked texts as students become familiar with the
strategy.
Bruton and Samuda (1981, as cited in Nation, 2001:259) also propose guiding students
through a deductive procedure, which differs from Clarke and Nation’s (1980:212) in that the
step of guessing occurs early in the strategy simply reflects and accommodates the reader’s
irresistible urge to guess, an urge that is postponed in Clarke and Nation’s strategy.
Gairns and Redman (1986:83) use the term “contextual guesswork” for the strategy of
making use of context in which the word appears to derive an idea of its meaning or in some
cases to guess from the word itself. They claim that speakers of European and non-European
languages alike can make use of their previous knowledge of English to guess the meanings of
unknown words. They give two examples:
(a). I overslept this morning.
(b). My work varies from week to week.
In the first example, the unknown word consists of parts which are already familiar and the
learner might have met the same prefix “over” in other words (e.g. overtime). This knowledge
enables the learners to work out the meaning. In the second example, with their knowledge of
the common noun “variety”, it is sufficient for the learners to deduce the meaning of “varies”
and understand the sentence.

In order to make the students focus on the text to develop the ability to guess from
context, various classroom activities can be devised from using the substitution of a nonsense
word for a particular item to approaching denser texts in which a wider context needs to be
understood before the meaning of a single item surfaces. Let’s consider the following two
examples:
(a). Can you turn the zong on, it’s cold in here?
(b). The newspaper has suffered during the past year because advertising money has
fallen by ten percent. However, this fall has been offset by increasing the price of the paper
from 20 pence to 22 pence.

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In example (a), students are able to guess that “zong” is some sort of heater because of the
word “cold”. And in (b), they need to understand the discourse markers, “however” in this
case, to deduce meaning.
The above discussed strategies have the advantage of having been designed with
students in mind so that they are relatively simple and easy to follow and to remember. A
much more complicated strategy is one described by van Parreren and Schouten van Parreren
(1981, as cited in Nation, 2001:257), who suggest that the student must learn a framework
appropriate for guessing – four linguistic levels (syntactic, semantic, lexical and stylistic) and
three phases of action (orient, execute and test), as well as how to estimate at which level to
begin (rather than going through each level in turn) and to judge the correctness of this
estimate. This strategy is relatively complex, and it is difficult to imagine how it could be
easily taught to students.
To conclude, the strategies discussed above are precious resources for teachers to use
to train their students. Each strategy has its own advantages. It seems that the strategy
suggested by Clarke and Nation (1980) is the clearest and the most suitable for high school
students.
1.5. Learner-strategy training
The ability to guess the meanings of unknown words from context is clearly a valuable
skill, so it is advisable that this strategy is fully exploited in class. It should be remembered,

though, that there are students for whom contextual guesswork is an obvious strategy and one
that does not require a lot of time spent on it. Other students may have considerable difficulty
with this type of task and would need to have the skill developed more gradually. This leaves
the teacher with the problem that this strategy is introduced and applied in the classroom in a
flexible way. In developing the basic skill of guessing, Twaddell (1980, as cited in Yang,
2000:22) recommends that students practise while guided. “It is the teacher’s task to organize
the teaching so as to facilitate this development . Teachers should accept a certain amount of
vagueness in guessing the meanings of words by students. The teacher should not expect
students to come up with exact meanings while guessing in this manner. Teachers should also
help students to realize that

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“through successive encounters with a word and successive guessing in context after
context, we sooner or later learn more and more precisely the meanings of the once
unfamiliar word. By the time we have encountered a word often enough, the
accumulated exclusions have subtracted enough from the vagueness, and the
associations of the word with its meanings have become increasingly precise”
(Twaddell, 1980, as cited in Yang, 2000:22).
This view is supported by Nation (2001:234) that learners must be confident in their guesses
which are not 100 percent correct. The successive encounters with a word make positive
contribution to knowledge of the meaning of the word.
According to Gairns and Redman (1986:84), “it is important that contextual guesswork
is not introduced into the lesson at a time when other skills are being developed”. Classroom
cassette recorders are useful devices for students to rewind and focus on a particular word or
phrase, but this is not a facility that is available in real situations where time spent deciding the
meaning of a single item probably results in the listener missing the next three sentences. In
these situations, attention to detail can reinforce certain students’ obsession with
understanding every word and have a detrimental effect on global understanding. The same is
true of written texts. Lengthy deliberations on a single item will interfere with the
development of the skill of “gist” reading. They also claim that students should not be asked to

guess the meaning from context when the context is wholly inadequate to the task. With
observation it is all too easy to see how the context illuminates the meaning of the target item;
from a position of ignorance it is not always that simple. This is particularly true if the target
item is surrounded by additional items which may be unknown or only partially known to the
students.
Since a contextual way of learning and expanding vocabulary is possible, we need to
know how to train students in this skill. Clarke and Nation (1980:212) gives a very good
strategy including four main steps on how to guess unknown words, which was described in
the previous part. However, readers must have clues in order to infer meaning from context. If
the context does not provide enough clues, inference is impossible. Both teachers and students
need to be aware of this. And below are some clues that Nation (1983:89) suggests students
learn to watch for.

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(1). Structural clues
We use structural clues to determine the type or grammatical category of the new word.
This tells us the kind of meaning to infer or look for. For example, if students are told that
“kneaf” is a verb, then the sequence, “the sploony urdle kneafed” will begin to make structural
sense. Learners know that either “sploony” or “urdle” must be a noun, since their grammar
knowledge tells them that a gap between “the” and a verb must be filled by a noun. Their
morphological knowledge will tell them that “sploony” is probably an adjective, and if it is a
noun, “urdle” may be another noun or an adverb. The teacher can provide students with
practice in this technique by preparing specific exercises such as sentences containing
nonsense words.
Additionally, students should take notice of the various types of definition clues.
Among these are the parentheses and footnotes, which are the most obvious definition clues.
The meaning of a word can be explained in parentheses. For example: “We have adopted the
view that every sentence can be described as a string (sequence) of constituents.” Students can
do exercises like drawing a line under the words in parentheses or giving the meaning of the
word that comes before the parentheses.

Most students enjoy learning words with similar and opposite meanings. The task is to
get learners to recognize the definitional role these synonyms and antonyms often play.
Students can learn that an unfamiliar word is often defined in a sentence using be and a
synonym. For instance: “a birthday party is an observance, that is, a remembrance of
someone’s day of birth.”
(2). Inference clues
Inference clues require a higher level of analytical skill and practice than the previous
types. For these types of clues, the same method of practice-recognizing elements and
obtaining meaning from the elements can be used.
The meanings of the words can be inferred from examples, often by using physical
clues such as “i.e.”, “e.g.”, and “for example”. Look at the following sample sentence:
“Iran is trying to restore many of its ancient monuments; Persepolis, for example, is
being partly rebuilt by a group of Italian experts.”

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By using the sum of the information in a sentence or paragraph, students can
understand an unfamiliar word. Here are four examples:
(a). Many products are sold to stop perspiration. This wetness comes from our body
whenever we are too warm, work very hard, or are afraid, and it usually doesn’t smell very
good. (With a physical cue)
(b). He’s a really good athlete. He plays sports well. (Without a physical cue)
(c). He’s bound to win. He can’t lose. (Opposite meaning)
(d). The forsythia was covered with the golden flowers that bloom early in the spring.
(Information given)
Readers can infer meanings of words by recalling similar situations or experiences and
by making the appropriate inferences. For instance, “The patient was 85 years old and
suffering from arthritis. He moved forward slowly, taking short, shuffling steps.”
Learners can often guess a word because it causes a result, or it is the result caused by
something described in the text. Here is one example “The conflagration was so fierce that
within just a few seconds one could see towering flames where the house had stood, and the

smoke, which filled the sky, could be seen for miles around.”
Sometimes learners can guess the meaning of a word by an explanation or a
description given in the same sentence or paragraph: “The soldier was filled with intense
remorse when he saw the terrible injuries suffered by people hit by the bomb his plane had
dropped. He was ashamed to look at the bleeding and broken bodies as they were carried into
the hospital. He cried and moaned when he saw that one was just a small child.”
Students can learn a definition through the association between an object and its
function or purpose for use: “The scientist removed the treatise from the shelf and began to
read.”
Many English words are formed using prefixes and suffixes. Teaching these meanings
can help students decipher meanings of unknown words by analyzing the word’s structure.
Students can also practise forming words by using suffixes and prefixes.
Honeyfield (1977) describes three types of exercises that can be used to help students
develop the skill of guessing the meanings of unknown words from context. In addition to the
use of teacher-guided cloze exercises, in which words are deleted from a text and words-in-

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context exercises, in which learners encounter target vocabulary items in the meaningful
context of a continuous text and use the surrounding context to arrive at the meaning through
focused discussion, he suggests context enrichment exercises, in which students are presented
with a succession of sentences, each with the same unknown word, each containing
progressively more information. He gives the following example:
(a). We had a whoosis.
A tropical fish, an egg beater or a leather suitcase?
(b). We had a whoosis, but the handle broke.
A tropical fish, an egg beater or a leather suitcase?
(c). We had a whoosis, but the handle broke, so we had to beat the egg with a fork.
A tropical fish, an egg beater or a leather suitcase?
The purpose of this kind of exercise is to increase students’ awareness of how far useful
context can extend from the unknown word and to encourage the learner to use wider context

to arrive at the meanings of unknown words. This exercise would seem most useful if it
employed authentic text, as opposed to invented contexts.
In summary, training students to guess the meanings of unknown words from context
is a complicated and cumulative procedure. Therefore, teachers should be patient and choose
suitable exercises for students to practice so as to be able to use this valuable strategy.


Chapter summary:
In this chapter of literature review, the writer has presented different basic issues
relating to the strategy of guessing the meanings of unknown words from context, which set
the theoretical background for the current study. Previous studies on this issue have been
reviewed. To serve the aim of the study, the writer has also paid attention to learner-strategy
training. In the next chapter, the writer reports the study for the answers to the proposed
research questions.




17
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY
In this chapter, methods of the study will be described clearly, including the research
setting and participants, important steps the researcher followed in conducting the study, the
materials she used at each step and the data analysis procedure
This action research project consists of three main stages: Pre – Improvement stage,
Trying – out stage and Post – Improvement stage. These stages are suggested by Tsui (1993).
2.1. The setting of the study and participants
2.1.1. The school
The context of the study is Nguyen Trai Gifted High School, which is the only gifted
high school in Hai Duong. Concerning the school’s facilities for English teaching and
learning, there are some major advantages. First, the class size is quite small in comparison

with that in other schools in the province. Each class consists of around 30 students, which
is not very difficult for teachers to conduct communicative activities in class. Moreover, the
teaching equipment is modern and convenient; therefore, teachers can apply the electronic
lessons to the extent that they desire for. With the above condition, it can be said that the
teachers and students are offered a convenient and modern environment for their teaching
and learning English.
2.1.2. Participants
The subjects chosen for the research include 59 grade 10
th
non-major English students
in class 10H and 10 D of Nguyen Trai High School, Hai Duong. The teacher-researcher has
been in charge of these two groups since they moved to their high school study. A striking
feature of these two groups is that they are all non-major English students. They all admitted
that they had studied English for at least four years. The textbook they are studying is English
10 for non-major English students promulgated by the Ministry of Education and Training.
Ten teachers who are currently teaching English at Nguyen Trai Gifted High School
were also chosen to answer the questionnaire for teachers. The teachers’ ages range from 25 to
48. Their experience of teaching English varies from three years to twenty six years. The
research was carried out during the second term of the academic year 2010 – 2011 at Nguyen
Trai High School.


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2.2. Three main stages of the action research
2.2.1. Pre – Improvement stage
Step 1: Identifying the problem
The action research is carried out with the aim of finding: “The effectiveness of
guessing the meanings of unknown words by non-English 10
th
graders at Nguyen Trai Gifted

High School, Hai Duong”. While working as a teacher at this school, the author realizes that
when encountering a new word, students often look up the meaning of a new word in a
bilingual dictionary or ask their teacher for its meaning. They rarely utilize critical thinking to
detect its meaning. This not only slows down the learning process but also makes students
dependent on bilingual dictionaries and their teachers. Here, a question is raised that whether
these students can be trained to use the guessing strategies to improve their ability to guess
word meanings from context as well as their competence of acquiring new vocabulary. To find
the answer to this question, the researcher conduct an action research project with 59 students
from two groups, 10H and 10D, at Nguyen Trai Gifted High School in five weeks during the
second semester of the academic year 2010 – 2011.
2.2.1.1. Giving a pre-test to evaluate students’ guessing ability
In order to identify students’ guessing ability before training, the researcher gave a text
as a pre-test (Appendix A) for students to list out the words they did not know and then to try
to guess their meanings. To ensure the reliability and validity of the test, the text is chosen
from the book “Revision and Examination English 10” for students of grade 10 published by
Education Publishing House. The text is about “Motion pictures”, which belongs to one of the
sixteen topics that students learn at grade 10. There are 168 words in the text. The text was
printed in a piece of paper and delivered to the students. The students did the task in twenty
minutes, and after that the teacher-researcher collected the pieces of paper to get the results.
After collecting the pieces of paper from the students, the teacher-researcher counted the
unknown words that the students had listed out. The researcher added all the words and took
the average number from 59 lists.
2.2.1.2. Conducting an informal interview about the way the students guessed
In order to get further information about students’ ability of guessing the meaning of
unknown words from context, the teacher-researcher carried out an informal interview about

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the way the students guessed. Three students from the two groups were selected randomly by
the researcher after the pre-test to answer the question: “How did you guess the meaning of the
unknown words in the text?”. The interview was conducted in Vietnamese so that the

participants could fully articulate their views without being constrained by the use of a second
language. The interview was recorded and then transcribed, translated and analysed by the
author.
Step 2: Finding causes of the problem
2.2.1.3. Consulting with colleagues
In order to get more professional advice, suggestions and ideas about helping students
improve the skill of guessing the meanings of unknown words from context the author
delivered a questionnaire for 10 English teachers who are teaching in the English Division at
Nguyen Trai Gifted High School to answer.
Five questions were chosen for the teachers of English in the English Division at
Nguyen Trai Gifted High School to answer on a piece of paper (Appendix B). After that, the
author collected all the pieces of paper and got the results.
2.2.1.4. Reading professional books/ journals for ideas and suggestions
After consulting with other teachers, the author decided to find more information about
training students to guess the meanings of unknown words from context in the professional
books or journals. The researcher found a number of guessing strategies suggested by scholars
all over the world. The strategies were presented in chapter one in this Minor Thesis Paper
(from page 10 to page 12). Among the strategies, the strategy suggested by Clarke and Nation
(1980:212) seems to be the most suitable for high school students. Therefore, the author chose
this strategy to introduce to the students and train them to guess the meanings of unknown
words from context.
2.2.2. Trying – out stage
Step 3: Designing strategies for improvements
From the comments, ideas and suggestions from the students, the colleagues,
professional books or journals and the author’s own teaching experience, the author of this
thesis planned to train the students in three lessons in three weeks to improve the problem.
Each lesson lasted 90 minutes. The lessons were designed as follows.

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Lesson 1: (Appendix C)

There were two main parts in this lesson.
- Firstly, in the theory part, the teacher-researcher presented the guessing strategy
suggested by Clarke and Nation (1980:212). The strategy consists of four steps and the teacher
demonstrated the steps to the learners, using the examples prepared in advance.
- Secondly, the practice part included two exercises. On doing these exercises, the
students could apply what they had learnt in the theoretical section, especially step one and
step three. In exercise 1, the students were required to identify the part of speech of the
underlined words. Exercise 2 asked the students to predict the positive or negative value of an
unknown word basing on the conjunctions before choosing an appropriate meaning for the
unknown word. This technique was presented in step three.
Lesson 2: (Appendix D)
This lesson consisted of two exercises.
- In exercise 1, the teacher gave the students two nonsense words. Each of the
nonsense words appears several times in a paragraph. The students tried to guess the meaning
of the nonsense words using Clarke and Nation’s (1980) strategy. The teacher guided the
students to guess the first word in detail. The teacher called on different learners to do each
step. Then they worked in groups to detect the meaning of the second word.
- In exercise 2, there were five questions. Each question consisted of an unknown word.
The unknown word appeared in several sentences in different contexts. Different contexts
made the situation easier for the students to guess the word’s meaning.

Lesson 3: (Appendix E)
In this lesson, the researcher gave a text for the students to list out the words they did
not know and then to try to guess their meanings. The text, which contains 198 words, is about
“Tea”. The text was printed in a piece of paper and delivered to the students. To help the
students work more effectively, the author provided them with a set exercise format which
was suggested by Clarke and Nation (1980). The exercise format could guide the learners
through the steps. The students did the task in twenty minutes and after that, the teacher-
researcher checked the exercise with the whole class.