Nghiên cứu việc sử dụng các chiến thuật đoán từ trong kỹ năng đọc hiểu tiếng anh

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES
----------

TRUONG THI HONG NHUNG

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE IT STUDENTS’ APPLICATION OF
VOCABULARY-GUESSING STRATEGIES IN ESP READING
COMPREHENSION AT A UNIVERSITY IN BAC NINH PROVINCE
(Nghiên cứu việc sử dụng các chiến thuật đoán từ trong kỹ năng đọc hiểu tiếng Anh
chuyên ngành của sinh viên Công nghệ thông tin ở một trường Đại học ở Bắc Ninh)

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS
Field: English Language Teaching Methodology
Code: 8140231.01

Hanoi - 2018


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES
----------

TRUONG THI HONG NHUNG

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE IT STUDENTS’ APPLICATION OF
VOCABULARY-GUESSING STRATEGIES IN ESP READING
COMPREHENSION AT A UNIVERSITY IN BAC NINH PROVINCE
(Nghiên cứu việc sử dụng các chiến thuật đoán từ trong kỹ năng đọc hiểu tiếng Anh

chuyên ngành của sinh viên Công nghệ thông tin ở một trường Đại học ở Bắc Ninh)

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology
Code: 8140231.01
Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phạm Thị Thanh Thùy

Hanoi - 2018


DECLARATION
I, the undersigned, certify my authority of the M.A minor thesis entitled “An
investigation into the IT students' application of vocabulary-guessing strategies in
ESP reading comprehension at a university in Bac Ninh Province” in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. To the best of my
knowledge and belief, this minor thesis contains no material which has previously been
submitted to any university or institution. Except where the references are indicated, no
other person’s piece of work has been used without due acknowledgements in the text
of the thesis.
Ha Noi, 2018
Student

Trương Thị Hồng Nhung

i


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to acknowledge my deep gratitude to all those who have supported

me in doing this independent study.
First and foremost, I would like to express my greatest appreciation to my
supervisor, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Pham Thi Thanh Thuy for her valuable time and useful
guidance towards the completion of this minor thesis.
Secondly, I am extremely grateful to my lecturers, my friends, my classmates,
as well as my colleagues for their invaluable comments and criticism and also for their
continued interest and encouragements, without their sincere participation, this paper
would not have been possible.
Next, I truly wish to thank all my students at PPUTL, especially those of class
B1D5 and B2D5 who have actively participated in the study.
Last but not least, my sincere thanks are extended to my beloved people, my
parents, my husband and my daughter for their love, care, tolerance and encouragement
during the time I had to spend for this thesis.

ii


ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to examine the application of vocabularyguessing strategies among third-year IT students at PPUTL while doing ESP reading
comprehension tasks and to propose solutions to help students overcome the
difficulties they experienced when applying these strategies. Three research questions
are submitted and answered accordingly. A pre-test, a post-test, a survey questionnaire
and think-aloud protocol are employed as research tools in this study. The collected
results indicate that the participants of this study make use of various strategies to deal
with unknown words while reading ESP texts. Among those strategies, vocabularyguessing one is the most preferred method. Of all word-inferring strategies, guessing
meaning from context is the most frequently-used one by the students. Using
collocation and syntactic knowledge are the next two most preferred guessing
strategies by the students. And most students admitted that they particularly lack
knowledge of vocabulary-guessing strategies, linguistic knowledge and intrinsic
motivation for reading. Some solutions then have been given by the author in order to

help them overcome these difficulties. Discussion, research limitations, pedagogical
implications and suggestions for further research are also presented in this thesis.

iii


TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION ..............................................................................................................i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................ii
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................ iv
LIST OF ABBRIVIATIONS .........................................................................................vii
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES ............................................................................ viii
LIST OF CHARTS .........................................................................................................ix
PART A: INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................... 1
1. Rationale of the Study.............................................................................................. 1
2. Aims of the Study .................................................................................................... 2
3. Research Questions .................................................................................................. 2
4. Scope of the Study ................................................................................................... 3
5. Significance of the Study ......................................................................................... 3
6. Method of the Study ................................................................................................ 4
7. Design of the Study.................................................................................................. 4
PART B: DEVELOPMENT.......................................................................................... 6
CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW .............................................................. 6
1.1. An Overview of Reading Comprehension ............................................................ 6
1.1.1. The Nature of Reading Comprehension ........................................................ 6
1.1.2. The Relationship between Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension .......... 7
1.2. Reading Comprehension Strategies ...................................................................... 8
1.2.1. Definition of Reading Comprehension Strategies ......................................... 8
1.2.2. Classification of Reading Comprehension Strategies ................................... 9

1.3. Vocabulary-guessing Strategies.......................................................................... 11
1.3.1. Definition of Vocabulary-guessing Strategies ............................................ 11
1.3.2. Classification of Vocabulary-guessing Strategies ....................................... 12
1.3.3. Importance of Vocabulary-guessing Strategies ........................................... 15
1.4. An Overview of ESP........................................................................................... 16
1.4.1. Definition of ESP ........................................................................................ 16
1.4.2. Classifications of ESP ................................................................................. 16
1.4.3. Characteristics of ESP ................................................................................. 17
1.5. Summary of Chapter 1 ........................................................................................ 19

iv


CHAPTER TWO: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ............................................... 20
2.1. Research Setting ................................................................................................. 20
2.1.1. An Overview of PPUTL and ESP Course in this University ...................... 20
2.1.2. The Students at PPUTL ............................................................................... 20
2.1.3. The Teachers and Teaching Methods of ESP at PPUTL ............................ 21
2.1.4. Course Books for Teaching ESP at PPUTL ................................................ 22
2.2. Research Methods ............................................................................................... 23
2.2.1. Description of the Subjects .......................................................................... 23
2.2.2. Data Collection Instruments ........................................................................ 24
2.2.3. Data Collection Procedures ......................................................................... 27
2.2.4. Data Analysis Procedures ............................................................................ 29
2.3. Summary of Chapter 2 ........................................................................................ 29
CHAPTER THREE: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ............................................ 31
3.1. Analysis of Questionnaires ................................................................................. 31
3.1.1. The Students’ Attitudes towards the Role of ESP Reading Comprehension
............................................................................................................................... 31
3.1.2. The Students’ Attitudes towards Application of Vocabulary-guessing

Strategies in ESP Reading Comprehension ........................................................... 33
3.2. Analysis of Verbal Reports ................................................................................. 37
3.2.1. Word-guessing Strategies Employed by Students Collected through Thinkaloud Protocol ........................................................................................................ 37
3.2.2. Comparison of Word-guessing Strategies Used by the Students in the
Questionnaire and Think-aloud Protocol............................................................... 39
3.2.3. Difficulties the Students’ Encountered When Using Word-guessing
Strategies to Make Guess ...................................................................................... 40
3.3. Solutions to Help Students Overcome Their Difficulties When Applying These
Word-guessing Strategies .......................................................................................... 43
3.4. Discussion of Research Questions ...................................................................... 45
3.4.1. Research Question One ............................................................................... 45
3.4.2. Research Question Two ............................................................................... 46
3.4.3. Research Question Three ............................................................................. 47
3.5. Summary of Chapter 3 ........................................................................................ 47
PART C: CONCLUSION............................................................................................ 49
1. Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 49

v


2. Pedagogical Implications of the Study .................................................................. 49
3. Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research ................................................ 51
REFERENCES ............................................................................................................. 53
APPENDICES ................................................................................................................ I
APPENDIX 1: PRE-TEST ............................................................................................... I
APPENDIX 2: POST-TEST ........................................................................................... V
APPENDIX 3: ANALYSIS OF DIFFICULT LEVELS OF PRE-TEST ......................IX
APPENDIX 4: ANALYSIS OF DIFFICULT LEVELS OF POST-TEST .................XIV
APPENDIX 5: ANSWER KEYS OF PRE- AND POST-TEST ................................. XX
APPENDIX 6: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR VOCABULARY-GUESSING

STRATEGIES .............................................................................................................XXI
APPENDIX 7: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS ......................... XXIV
APPENDIX 8: PHIẾU KHẢO SÁT Ý KIẾN HỌC VIÊN .................................. XXVIII
APPENDIX 9: STUDENTS’ VERBAL REPORTS ............................................... XXXI

vi


LIST OF ABBRIVIATIONS
ABBREVIATIONS

MEANINGS

CEFR

Common European Framework of Reference for Languages

EFL

English as foreign language

ESL

English as a second language

ESP

English for specific purposes

EST

English for Science and Technology

GE

General English

IT

Information Technology

L1

First Language

L2

Second Language

PPUTL

People’s Police University of Technology and Logistics

vii


LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
1. List of Tables
Table 1.1: Summary of vocabulary- guessing strategies that might be used by the IT
students at PPUTL when doing ESP reading comprehension tasks

Table 2.1: Vocabulary-guessing strategies used by the IT students at PPUTL
Table 3.1: Ranks of strategies use according to results from Questionnaire and Thinkaloud protocol
2. List of Figures
Figure 2.1: Research procedure

viii


LIST OF CHARTS
Chart 3.1: The importance of ESP reading comprehension
Chart 3.2: Students' evaluation of difficult levels of ESP reading comprehension texts
Chart 3.3: Students’ evaluation of some factors influencing performance of ESP
reading comprehension
Chart 3.4: Students’ frequency use of strategies for unknown words
Chart 3.5: Students’ frequency use of vocabulary-guessing strategies

ix


PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the Study
Under the circumstance of the blooming Fourth Industrial Revolution, English
has become the key to world’s science, technology and commerce. Thus, at present
learning English is not only the interest but also the great and practical demand for
everyone, especially for those who want to be able to get well-paid jobs in foreign
companies, have opportunities to study abroad or have chances of being promoted and so
on.
Being aware of the importance of English language, Vietnamese leaders have
been paying great attention and investment on improving students’ English
competence. A typical example can be listed is the National Foreign Languages Project

scheme for the 2008-2020 periods which delves into brand-new advances to improve
effectively the quality of English language learning and teaching across all school
levels in Vietnam.
Keeping up with the current trend and implementing the scheme, the
administration board of the People’s Police University of Technology and Logistics
(PPUTL) once again affirmed that English is among the most important skills which IT
students had better improve while training at this university.
Among the four general skills including listening, speaking, reading and writing
that any learners need to master when studying English, reading skills in general and
reading comprehension skills in particular are considered the most crucial. AlM’tassim (2014) wrote in his article that “the mastery of reading comprehension skills
is the key for students to get well with most content courses”. In PPUTL, this is
definitely true for students specializing in Information Technology because there are a
plenty of available materials relevant to Information and Technology are written in
English.
In the context of teaching and learning ESP at PPUTL, very little classroom
time, even not at all, is spent on instructing students reading strategies meanwhile

1


comprehension questions are the most dominant tasks in ESP reading lessons.
Throughout the teaching ESP for IT students at this university, the author observed that
the students had poor results in ESP reading comprehension. In reality, most IT
students at this university admitted that a lack of vocabulary knowledge is the largest
obstacle for them to overcome ESP reading comprehension tasks. Additionally,
misconception about the nature of reading and incomplete awareness of reading
comprehension strategies may be the reasons for their poor achievement in ESP
reading comprehension. It is the same as Alderson’s point of view, “the answer perhaps
inevitably, is equivocal and tentative – it appears to be both a language problem and a
reading problem” (p.24).

In brief, all the above have inspired the author to conduct a study on “An
investigation into the IT students' application of vocabulary-guessing strategies in ESP
reading comprehension at a university in Bac Ninh Province” with the hope to make a
little contribution to the quality of teaching and learning reading comprehension skills
of ESP texts for IT students at this university.
2. Aims of the Study
This study aims to address the following issues:
(1) Identifying the students’ attitudes towards application of word-inferring
strategies when reading ESP texts;
(2) Finding out the vocabulary-guessing strategies which the IT students at
PPUTL use most frequently to make sense of unfamiliar words;
(3) Proposing solutions to help students overcome their difficulties when
applying these word-guessing strategies.
3. Research Questions
In correspondence with the aforementioned aims, the researcher attempted to
answer the following questions:
Question One: What are the IT students’ attitudes towards ESP reading
comprehension?

2


Question Two: Which vocabulary-guessing strategies do the IT students at PPUTL use
most frequently to work out the meaning of unknown words in ESP reading
comprehension?
Question Three: What might be good solutions to help students overcome their
difficulties when applying these word-guessing strategies?
4. Scope of the Study
Within the frame of this research, the author focuses on examining wordinferring strategies employed by IT students to surmise the meanings of unknown
words as well as their difficulties when applying these strategies. The research was

conducted during the second term of 2017-2018 academic year when the students were
studying ESP course. And the subjects of the study were 100 third-year IT students at
PPUTL.
5. Significance of the Study
Among many problems when doing reading comprehension sections of ESP
texts like factual information, references, vocabulary, summary, negative facts,
inferences,vocabulary is still considered a challenging task. It is impossible to learn by
heart all the words. Thus making an educated guess based on context clues is a solution
to this problem.
The study is expected to contribute to the development of teaching and learning
reading comprehension skills of ESP. First and foremost, it would be of great value in
raising students’ awareness of employing word-guessing strategies when they come up
with unknown words in the reading lessons. These strategies also play an important
role in improving students’ reading comprehension skills and help them have ideas to
turn reading lessons into more exciting and successful ones. Furthermore, this research
can be used as a reference source for those who are interested in this issue and a
supplement to the previous studies on application of word-guessing strategies to
develop reading comprehension skills of ESP texts.

3


6. Method of the Study
This study was conducted as a survey research that utilized both quantitative
and qualitative approaches. The quantitative analysis was employed through the
process of data collection from a survey questionnaire. In addition, the qualitative
approach was used to deal with data collected from semi-structured interview and
think-aloud protocols. The author employed think-aloud protocol with the aim of
finding out actual vocabulary-guessing strategies which had been used by the students
as well as their difficulties when applying these strategies. According to Mami (2008),

“reading is normally a silent, hidden process, researchers cannot determine what is
happening by simple observation or by product-based assessment; therefore, asking
readers to provide verbal reports or protocols is the most direct way to access this
process”. Thus, think-aloud techniques are a useful way to find out why these choices
are being made, as the participant can take the survey with the researchers present, and
the researchers can observe what is happening and ask questions as the participants
interacts with the survey. In conclusion, using think-aloud protocol helps the researcher
improve the validity of instruments that are used to support primarily quantitative
research goals. Specifically, the combination of various data collection methods in the
current study not only enables the researcher to examine in-depth the vocabularyguessing strategies employed by the IT students, but also helps her achieve the aims of
the study.
7. Design of the Study
The study is composed of three main parts: Introduction, Development, and
Conclusion.
Part A: Introduction which states the rationale, aims, research questions,
scope, significance, method and design of the study.
Part B: Development consists of three chapters:
Chapter One: Literature Review provides the background of the study,
including the nature of reading comprehension, the relationship between

4


vocabulary and reading comprehension, reading comprehension strategies,
word-inferring strategies and an overview of ESP.
Chapter Two: Research Methodology deals with information of the research
context, participants, data collection instruments, data collection procedures, and
data analysis procedures.
Chapter Three: Findings and Discussion presents data analysis, the results
and discussions.

Part C: Conclusion summarizes the main issues covered in the paper, points
out the limitations and provides some suggestions for further studies in the research
area.

5


PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter presents the theories concerning vocabulary-guessing strategy in
reading comprehension of ESP texts. It is divided into four main sections. The first
section provides an overview of reading comprehension. In the second part, theories
on reading comprehension strategies are given. The third section provides details
about vocabulary-guessing strategy with its definition, classification and importance.
The last part gives an overview of ESP including its definition, characteristics and
classifications.
1.1. An Overview of Reading Comprehension
1.1.1. The Nature of Reading Comprehension
In teaching and learning a foreign language in general and teaching reading skill
in particular, it is necessary to understand the nature of reading comprehension. Grabe
(1991) showed in his study that reading was considered as the primary skill in second
language learning, especially in academic settings. It can be understood reading
comprehension as the ability to draw attention to the required information from the text
as efficiently as possible. In fact, methodologists have been providing different
definitions of reading comprehension.
According to Grelet (1981:3), “Reading comprehension or understanding a
written text means extracting the required information from it as efficiently as
possible”. This means that the reader can show his understanding of the text by reexpressing its content in various ways such as summarizing or answering questions,
etc.
Studying the nature of reading comprehension, Richards (1978) indicated,

“reading comprehension is not only understanding simply what is written, but also is
what stimulates students to remember from their experiences”. This point of view
concentrates on the reader’s understanding of the message based on the individual’s
background knowledge and experience. Smith (1985) shared the same idea that reading

6


comprehension involves bringing a prior knowledge that readers already have in their
heads interacted with what they are reading, so that they can make inferences from the
different words and expressions the writer uses, in order to comprehend information,
ideas and viewpoints.
From the aforementioned theories, it can be concluded that reading
comprehension is a process in which readers filter understanding through the lens of
their motivation, knowledge, cognitive abilities and experiences to get what is
conveyed in the text. It does not mean that the reader needs to understand every single
word in the text but actively work on the text and extract the required information
efficiently. In other words, according to Durkin (1993), “reading is the construction of
meaning of a written text through the interactions between text and reader”.
1.1.2. The Relationship between Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension
It is undeniable that vocabulary knowledge seems to have an obvious and
distinct role in L2 reading comprehension. According to Nation and Coady (1988),
“although vocabulary knowledge is not the only factor contributing to reading
comprehension, vocabulary can be an accurate predictor of the difficulty of a certain
text”. If the students lack L2 vocabulary knowledge, it is very difficult for them to
understand the text.
Zheng (2002) once again affirmed in his study that vocabulary knowledge plays
a tremendous role in the reading comprehension. Therefore, adequate vocabulary
knowledge seems to be a prerequisite for more high level reading processes like
activating appropriate background knowledge and guessing words successfully from

context. It is true according to Perfetti’s point of view (1995: 112) that “helping
students develop text problem solving skills such as using context to figure out
interpretations, intentions, conclusions, and so on is a good idea. But getting good at
word identification is an important goal in setting the stage for the successful use of
such comprehension strategies.” This means that it is necessary to instruct the students
to utilize vocabulary-based strategies in order to enhance reading comprehension skill.

7


One thing to bear in mind, however, is that the density of unfamiliar words in a
text often plays a significant role in the success or failure in this type of guessing.
Nation (2001) affirmed that the higher the density of unknown words is, the more
challenging the guessing task will be. While there are a number of ways of dealing
with unknown words, in-formed lexical guessing, or inferring, is often seen as a
popular and useful approach to text processing in L2 reading (Qian, 1999).
In short, the above showed the strong relationship between vocabulary and
reading comprehension. Although there is no clear link between vocabulary and
comprehension (Hiebert & Kamil, 2005), understanding of vocabulary is an entrenched
predictor of overall reading comprehension and recognized as a strong determinant of
reading success (Lovelace & Stewart, 2009). Hence, applying vocabulary-based
strategies is really an effective way to help students improve their reading
comprehension.
1.2. Reading Comprehension Strategies
1.2.1. Definition of Reading Comprehension Strategies
In order to become successful in studying any foreign language, it is necessary
for learners to know how to employ different strategies to overcome obstacles they
encounter during their learning process. Many

authors

attempted

to

provide

descriptions for reading comprehension strategies; nevertheless, there is a lack of
consensus on this.
Strategy is defined in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary as “a plan that
is intended to achieve a particular purpose” (2005). Garner (1987: 50) defined reading
strategies as “generally deliberate, playful activities undertaken by active learners,
many times to remedy perceived cognitive failure”.
Another definition suggested by Barnett (1988: 150-162) regards reading
strategies as the mental operations included when the reader approaches the text
effectively and makes sense of what he reads. Some techniques include skimming,
scanning, reading for meaning, predicting, activating general information, making

8


inferences and guessing word meanings from context, etc. Later, reading strategies are
given by Carrell (1998: 97) as interest not only for what they reveal about the ways
readers manage interactions with written text but also for how the use of strategies is
related to effective comprehension.
According to Block (1986), reading strategies indicate how readers conceive a
task, what textual cues they attend to, how they make sense of what they read, and
what they do when they do not understand a particular text.
Brown (2007) also defined strategies as the “specific methods of approaching a
problem or task, modes of operation for achieving a particular end, planned designs for

controlling and manipulating certain information.” In his research, Brown clearly
shows that strategies vary within individuals from moment to moment as the specific
problems and contexts change.
Although the definitions of reading strategies are based on different points of view,
it can be summarized that reading comprehension strategy is “a cognitive or behavioral
action that is enacted under particular contextual conditions with the goal of improving
some aspects of comprehension” (Graesser, 2007). In this sense, the appropriate
implementation of comprehension skills and strategies is one of critical components of
reading comprehension success. From all of these above, it can be inferred that the
purpose of reading strategies is to help students approach the text effectively and to
have general knowledge, to get specific detail and to find out the main idea or theme of
the reading materials.
1.2.2. Classification of Reading Comprehension Strategies
Up to the present reading comprehension strategies have been classified in
various ways by different authors.
According to study of Goodman (1970), he divided L2 reading strategies into
two types of processing: bottom-up and top-down. On the one hand, bottom-up
strategies involve recognizing a multiplicity of linguistic signals, such as letters,
morphemes, syllables, words, phrases, grammatical cues, and discourse markers, and

9


applying linguistic data-processing mechanisms to impose order on these signals; on
the other hand, top-down strategies involve drawing on one’s own intelligence and
experience to understand a text through a puzzle-solving process, or inferring meaning
to decide what to retain and what not to retain.
Eleven years later, Rubin (1981) proposed six general reading strategies, namely
clarification, guessing, deductive reasoning, practice, memorization, and monitoring.
These strategies might contribute directly to language learning.

Later, Oxford’s (1990) classification is another taxonomy of learning strategies
that is used popularly in many language learning researches. He divided learning
strategies into six types. They are memory strategies, cognitive strategies,
compensation strategies, metacognitive strategies, affective strategies, and social
strategies.
In another study, O’Malley & Chamot (1990) emphasized that these strategies
are used to construct associations between new and existing knowledge of the learners.
The prominent cognitive strategies include translation, grouping, note-taking,
deduction, imagery, keyword, contextualization, elaboration and inference.
Metacognitive strategies are higher critical thinking skills that help readers
achieve awareness of whether they understand a reading text or not (Wenden & Rubin,
1987: 19). These strategies help learners identify available resources, decide which of
these resources are important for the specific task they perform and set goals for
comprehension. In fact, the effectiveness of the application of those strategies relies on
not only the strategy itself but also the factors including (a) who is employing it, (b)
how consciously it is employed, (c) what kind of text is being read, (d) when it is being
employed and (e) why it is being used (Carrell, 1998; Farrell, 2001). Bishop et al.
(2005: 207-208) mention that metacognitive deals with various kinds of reading
strategies such as imagining, using a variety of senses, making connections, analyzing
text structure, recognizing words and understanding sentences, exploring inferences,

10


asking questions, determining important ideas and themes, evaluating, summarizing
and synthesizing.
To sum up, reading comprehension is the act of understanding what you are
reading. It is an active process readers made by connecting their prior knowledge and a
particular piece of writing to comprehend the author’s messages. Importantly, to
become successful readers, it is necessary for L2 learners to be active and selective in

using strategies applying to fully comprehend reading texts.
1.3. Vocabulary-guessing Strategies
1.3.1. Definition of Vocabulary-guessing Strategies
There have been various studies on word-guessing strategies in reading
comprehension skills so far. Effective readers wisely use pictures, titles, headings, and
text - as well as personal experiences—to make predictions before they begin to read.
Making predictions is a strategy in which readers use information from a text
(including titles, headings, pictures, and diagrams) and their own personal experiences
to anticipate what they are about to read (or what comes next).
Word-inferring is defined as a cognitive process that utilizes “familiar attributes
and contexts” to recognize something unfamiliar in reading (Paribarht & Wesches,
1999: 198). Besides, lexical inference involves the process of “making informed
guesses as to the meaning of a word in light of all available linguistic cues in
combinations with the learner’s general knowledge of the world, her awareness of
context and her relevant linguistic knowledge” (Haastrup, 1991: 40). Therefore,
guessing is necessary when learners encounter unknown words in reading texts.
Sharing the same idea, Oxford (1990) said that guessing intelligently in reading,
sometimes called “inferring”, and involves using a wide variety of linguistic and
nonlinguistic clues to guess the meaning when the learner does not know all the words.
To conclude, vocabulary-predicting strategy plays an important role in reading
comprehension. It can help students become good readers and make reading
comprehension tasks more fun. By using this strategy in combination with such

11


techniques as skimming and previewing a text, students are motivated to read and
encouraged to study the text carefully to confirm their prior predictions.
1.3.2. Classification of Vocabulary-guessing Strategies
Different researchers have carried out research on classifications of wordpredicting strategies. Based on these previous studies, the researcher lists out all

vocabulary- guessing strategies that might be used by the IT students at PPUTL when
doing ESP reading comprehension tasks as in the following table:
Table 1.1: Summary of vocabulary- guessing strategies that might be used by the
IT students at PPUTL when doing ESP reading comprehension tasks
Vocabulary- guessing strategies that might be used by
No

the IT students at PPUTL when doing ESP reading

Researchers

comprehension tasks
1

2
3

Looking for relationships between words to determine
the meaning of unknown word
Deconstructing word parts and examining the meaning
of each part
Analyzing the compound words into their constituents
Kaivanpanah and

4
5

Guessing based on sentence level semantic clues
Looking beyond the word, or even the sentence, level for
clues to determine the meaning

6

Looking for homonym/ phonetic similarity

7

Making guess based on collocation knowledge

8

Alavi (2008)

Paraphrasing Devices, which consisted of definition,
exemplification, and restatement

12

Gao (2012)


9

10

Logical Clues, which included comparison and contrast,
causal clues, parallel, or parataxis, and collocation
Background Clues, which were composed of scene,
common knowledge, and experience

11

Morphological Clues

12

Monitoring Devices

13

Guess using extra textual (thematic or word) knowledge
Guess using discourse context i.e. outside the sentence in

14

which the word occurred (using forward or backward
context)

15
16

Guess using syntactic knowledge
Guess using visual forms (similarity or morphological
understanding)

17

Guess using phonological similarity

18

Guess using local (sentence level) context

19

Wang (2011)

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

20

Guess using pictures

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Guess using head titles

Hypothesis of the
author

Source: Summary of the author

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Kaivanpanah and Alavi (2008), from a study on the role of linguistic
knowledge, identified seven different word-guessing strategies. The first strategy is
looking for relationships between words to determine the meaning of unknown word. It
belongs to grammatical knowledge of sentence level. The second one is deconstructing

word parts and examining the meaning of each part, which lies in the level of word
morphology and class membership. The third one is analyzing the compound words
into their constituents. This strategy is similar to the second in that it involves
deconstructing words and examining the meaning of each part. The next strategy they
find is sentence level semantic clues. This strategy seems to be more sophisticated and
shows deeper word knowledge than the previously mentioned strategies. The next
strategy involving discourse/text, by which learners attempts to look beyond the word,
or even the sentence, level for clues to determine the meaning. And homonym/
phonetic similarity and collocation are the last two strategies. The former compares
words that sound similar in the second language and the latter uses knowledge of how
words are usually paired together to infer meaning.
Gao (2012), based on Palmberg’s (1987) understanding of the characteristics of
the unknown words and the context clues where those unknown words occurred, from
a new perspective, classified these strategies systematically into five types, namely: (1)
Paraphrasing Devices, which consisted of definition, exemplification, and restatement.
(2) Logical Clues, which included comparison and contrast, causal clues, parallel, or
parataxis, and collocation. (3) Background Clues, which were composed of scene,
common knowledge, and experience. (4) Morphological Clues and (5) Monitoring
Devices. He adds that these strategies though classified separately, it does not mean
that they work in isolation. Readers might employ more than one strategy in facilitating
their understanding of the text in reading.
Later, according to Wang (2011:303), the taxonomy of word-guessing strategies
including seven different guessing strategies as follows:
+ Guess using extra textual (thematic or word) knowledge

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