VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies ĐÀM LAN HƯƠNG

EFFECTIVENESS OF GUESSING MEANING FROM
CONTEXT IN IMPROVING STUDENTS’ WORD-ATTACK
SKILLS AT UNIVERSTITY OF LABOR AND SOCIAL
AFFAIRS

(Hiệu quả của việc đoán từ theo ngữ cảnh nhằm nâng cao kỹ năng xử
lý từ mới của sinh viên trường Đại học Lao động Xã hội) M.A Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Language Teaching Methodology
Code: 601410

M.A Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Language Teaching Methodology
Code: 601410

Supervisor: Nguyễn Huyền Minh, M.A HANOI - 2009
TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABSTRACT
TABLE OF CONTENT
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
LIST OF TABLES
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the study
1.2 Statement of the problem
1.3 Purposes of the study

3.4.1 Pre-test and post-test results
3.4.2 Questionnaire results
3.4.3 Interview results
3.4.4 Observation results
4.2 Discussion
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION
REFERENCES
APPENDICES
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 1. EFL: English as a Foreign Language.
2. ESL: English as a Second Language.
3. ESP: English for Specific Purpose
4. L1: First Language
5. ULSA: University of Labor and Social Affairs
Since 1986 when the Vietnamese government implemented open door policy, English has
gained more significance and been considered as an important tool for Vietnam‟s integration
into global world. Thus, the government has paid more and more attention to the teaching and
learning of English at schools, colleges and universities. English has rapidly become the most
popular second language among Vietnamese people. It is a tool for getting access to
information from different sources including scientific and literary books and journals as well
as the internet websites in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context, which helps to
bring them opportunities to enrich their knowledge in particular and to improve their future
prospect in general.
Reading is a process which contributes to success in learning a foreign language and good
language learners are considered to be good readers. In order to become good or successful
readers, students need to be equipped with the skills to comprehend the reading texts. Reading
strategies are said to facilitate successful second language learning and be effective tools for
students to develop their reading skills. To help students master these reading strategies,
instruction on reading strategies is said to be essential. However, empirical research indicates
that in most reading classrooms students have received inadequate instruction on reading skills
and strategies. There is a lack of connection between instruction and reading activity. The
teacher‟s emphasis is often put on the production of comprehension rather than the processing
skills. This reality called for the integration of reading strategies into reading instruction to
help students become more strategic readers.
Of all the reading strategies commonly recognized today in second language reading, guessing
from context seems to be one of the most valuable but difficult strategies for second language
students to master. It was found out that they were often reluctant to engage in the guessing
process as they preferred first language (L1) translations. Furthermore, students do not have
sufficient skills to derive the meaning of unknown words or phrases that they meet during
reading comprehension process. Their guessing skills are often poor, especially where context
clues are not in the immediate textual environment. Therefore, guessing strategies for
unknown words has been strongly emphasized
1.2 Statement of the problem
Reading comprehension is essential to academic learning areas, to professional success and to

concern.
1.5 Methodology of the study
This study employs both qualitative and quantitative methods. An explicit instruction
programme on the strategy of guessing from context was conducted in addition to regular
English curriculum. Data from questionnaires were collected to study the students‟ changes in
attitudes towards the strategy of guessing from context. A pre-test and post-test were done to
study the actual performance of students in the use of the strategy before and after the
programme. Observations and interviews with students were also used to get more valid and
reliable results.
1.6 Design of the study
The research consists of four main chapters: Introduction, Literature Review, the Study and
Conclusion.
Chapter 1, Introduction, presents the background and statement of the problem, the purpose,
and the design as well as the scope of the study.
Chapter 2, Literature Review, discusses issues of reading, reading processes, major
approaches to teaching reading, reading strategies in general and the strategy of guessing
meaning from context in particular.
Chapter 3, Research Design and Methods, explains the methodology used in the study
including the population information, instrumentation, and data collection and data analysis,
Chapter 4, Findings and Discussion, reports the findings as well the discussion of the results.
Chapter 5, Conclusion, offers a summary of the findings and further implication for using the
strategy of guessing from context in teaching reading skills.
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter provides an overview of the topic, review of related studies. The three main
features will be presented are: theoretical background of reading, reading strategies, and the
strategy of guessing meaning from context.
2.1 What is reading?
2.1.1 Definition of reading
Traditionally, reading is seen as a mere process of decoding of reconstructing the author's
intended meaning via recognizing the printed letters and words, and building up a meaning for

Intensive reading activities are needed for four main reasons: to help students comprehend
written texts, to become more aware of text organization to better comprehend written texts, to
learn how to use and monitor effective reading strategies, and to develop general literacy skills
necessary to generate productive expressions in second language (Paran, 2003, p.40).
The advantage of intensive reading is that it focuses the student on certain aspects of the
language. However, intensive reading is usually done with difficult texts with many unknown
words that require the student to use a dictionary. This means the reading is slow and that
there are few opportunities for the student to learn to read smoothly, because she has to stop
every few seconds to work on something she can't understand. This slows or prevents the
development of fluent eye movements that are so necessary to improve one's reading skill.
Intensive reading is the most typically taught method of teaching reading. Unfortunately some
teachers only know this method and believe that by teaching the vocabulary and grammar that
is all the student needs. This is not so, she also needs practice in reading and to be trained in
developing reading skills.
Extensive reading
Another type of reading is “extensive reading”. There have been conflicts about the definition
of the term “extensive reading”. Some refer it to “skimming and scanning activities”, while
others associate it to quantity material. Susser and Robb (1990) define “extensive reading” as
a language teaching/learning procedure that it is reading (a) of a large quantity of material or
long texts; (b) for global or general understanding; (c) with the intention of obtaining pleasure
from the text. Donnes also shares the same idea about definition of “extensive reading” as
Susser and Robb, stating that it is an approach in which readers self-select materials from a
collection of graded readers (books which have reduced vocabulary range and simplified
grammatical structures)
Extensive reading has several aims, which include encouraging second language readers to
read for pleasure and information both inside and outside the classroom, to read for meaning,
and to encourage in sustained silent reading. He also points out benefits of extensive reading.
Extensive reading improves second language readers‟ comprehension, promotes their
vocabulary knowledge development, and enhances their writing skills and oral proficiency.
Extensive reading is also effective in facilitating growth of readers‟ positive attitudes toward

connected and support each other.
O‟Malley (1987) points out that good language learners use a variety of strategies in their
learning of a second language and that less competent learners might improve their skills in a
second language through training on strategies. Thus, they can apply strategies to the
acquisition of different language skills, and explicit strategy training should be applied to them.
2.3 Reading strategies
Over the past three decades the importance of the strategies ESL students use while reading
has been recognized. Nowadays, most researches on reading focus on the effective reading
strategies that increase students‟ comprehension. The common results showed that there is a
positive relationship between strategies and reading comprehension. Success in reading
mainly depends on appropriate strategy used and unsuccessful students can improve their
reading by being trained to use effective strategies (Danseeau, 1985). Carrell (1983) also
stated that reading strategies can be taught to students, and when taught strategies help
improve student performance.
2.3.1 Definition of reading strategies
So, the question is “What are reading strategies?” There is a lack of consensus about the
definition of the term “reading strategies”. According to Block, 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 (Block, 1986). Also, they suggest how
readers view interaction with written text and how strategies are related to text comprehension.
Garner (1987) defined reading strategies as an action or series of actions employed to
construct meaning. Barnett (1989) used the term “reading strategy” to refer to the mental
operations involved when readers purposefully approach a text to make sense of what they
read. In the light of these concepts, the working definition of “reading strategies” in my study
is that specific actions consciously employed by the student for the purpose of reading.
2.3.2 Classification of reading strategies
The classification of reading strategies may range from very broad one such as skimming and
scanning to very sophisticated one including guessing and recognizing text structure, from
simple fix-up strategies such as re-reading difficult segments to more comprehensive
strategies such as summarizing and relating what is being read to the reader‟s background

One problem encountered by many readers is unfamiliar vocabulary. Guessing using context
clues has been suggested by researchers as a solution to that problem. It is an essential and
good strategy for students to deal with reading texts while they can not, through vocabulary
programme, acquire sufficient amount of vocabulary which is one of the most troublesome
aspects of reading for second or foreign language readers.
2.4.1 What is context?
Traditionally, context was seen as a given, existing fully and completely in any properly
written text, and the key to using it was linguistic knowledge. However, this definition is
claimed to place too much emphasis on linear, bottom-up processing. Thus, various definitions
of context have been proposed that include language knowledge but emphasize the role played
by high-level knowledge sources and personal experiences.
According to Dycus (1997), context, at a basic level, can be defined as information that
reduces uncertainty about the elements of a text, their meanings, and the meaning of the text as
a whole.
Dycus (1997) classified context into local context and global context. According to Dycus,
local context is provided by intrasentential and sentential information while global context is
provided by intersentential to discourse level information and world knowledge. He also
added that it is useful to distinguish between these two types of context, especially regarding
the guessing strategy and second language readers since successful use of the guessing
strategy often depends on which of these contexts is available and how it is useful.
Sinatra and Dowd (1992) have another way of classification that divides context into two
types: syntactic clues and semantic clues. The syntactic clues were related to grammatical
structure whereas semantic clues involved intra- and inter-sentence meaning relationship.
They argued that by understanding how the writer used grammar, the reader would have a
direct key to unlocking a word‟s meaning. The reader should also use semantic clues such as
restatement, use of examples and summary clues when guessing the meaning of a new word.
Haastrup (1991) suggests that language learners possibly use three sources of guessing:
contextual, intralingual, and interlingual cues. Contextual clues refer to one or two words
from the immediate co-text of new lexicon, the entire sentence context containing new lexical
items, or a specific aspect of co-text beyond the sentence in which the new word may help in

those specifically designed for the training of the strategy of guessing from context (Beck et
al., 1983). Natural co-texts are divided into four categories, namely misdirective co-texts,
nondirective co-texts, general co-texts and directive co-texts.
To conclude, these various factors operate simultaneously for proficient readers; they usually
operate quite unconsciously; and they can affect the identification of single words as well as
the reader's understanding of an entire text. The automatic use of context - of multiple contexts
- is a crucial part of the reading process, though most people don't realize it.
2.4.2 What is guessing from context?
The notion of guessing from context arose from the analogy between L1 and L2 reading.
According to Oxford (1990) guessing is a compensation strategy which enables learners to use
the new language for either comprehension or production despite limitations in knowledge.
Haastrup (1991) claim that guessing is a cognitive strategy since cognitive strategies are the
steps or operations used in learning or problem solving that require direct analysis,
transformation or synthesis of learning materials and it does not automatically lead to learning,
although it has the potential for doing so.
As Oxford (1990) states guessing strategies involve using a wide variety of clues - linguistic
or nonlinguistic- to guess the meaning when the learner does not know all the words. She adds
that good language learners, when confronted with unknown expressions, make educated
guesses. On the other hand, less adept language learners often panic, tune out, or grab the dog-
eared dictionary and try to look up every unfamiliar word – harmful responses which impede
progress toward proficiency.
Nassaji defines guessing from context strategies as any cognitive or metacognitive activity that
the learner turned to for help while trying to derive the meaning of the unknown word from
context. According Pressley and Afferbach (1995), three main categories of strategy types are
identifying, evaluating, and monitoring strategies. Identifying strategies were defined as those
that the learners used to identify the meaning of the new word in the text. Evaluating strategies
were those that learners used to evaluate and check the accuracy of their initial guesses. A
strategy was coded as monitoring when the learner showed an awareness of the nature of the
problem by making an explicit judgment about the ease or difficulty of the word based on the
available cues in the text. While both identifying and evaluating are cognitive strategies,

learners‟ pre-existing knowledge which is classified into three main categories: linguistic
knowledge, world knowledge, and strategic knowledge.
Hinkel added that the students must have developed some skill in reading and should read a lot.
Ninety eight percent of the running words in the texts that are used for guessing should be
already familiar to the students. This means that there will be a substantial amount of
comprehensible supportive context for each familiar word. If these prerequisites are satisfied,
then training in guessing can have useful effects. Training can focus on the linguistic clues
available for guessing – the part of speech of the word, its immediate context, and its wider
context of conjunction relationships – and on the background knowledge clues. Because the
linguistic clues are more generalizable, these should get more attention, but successful
guessing depends on a combination of a language item and a message focus (Hinkel, 2005).
Huckin and Bloch (1968) propose a model of guessing meaning from context that incorporates
several components including a knowledge module component and a metalinguistic strategic
component. The former component includes a vocabulary knowledge module, a text schema
module, a syntax and morphology module, and a text representation module, etc, while the
later component includes a sequence of cognitive and decision-making strategies that the
learner uses when trying to generate and test word meanings and hypotheses. According to
Huckin and Bloch, these strategies play an important role in guessing from context in that they
help the learner decide when and how to proceed and seek help from context and various
sources of knowledge available. However, it should be noted in addition to above components,
guessing meaning from context also involved a range of knowledge sources and strategies,
that is the various cognitive the various cognitive and metacognitive activities learners use
when identifying and constructing word meaning from context. The strategy many range from
the internal structure of the word (such as analysis of the phonological and orthographic
structure of the word) to those involving the use of top-down contextual and sentence-level
clues (Haastrup, 1991).
2.4.4 Approaches to teaching of guessing strategies
Guessing from context is a complex and often difficult strategy to carry out successfully.
Although this strategy often may not result in gaining full understanding of a word meaning
and form, guessing from context may still contribute to vocabulary learning. Given the

5. Self-evaluate the use of the strategy
Bruton and Samuda (1981) proposed a 6-stage guessing procedure, which provided a
framework for teachers to follow:
1. Focus on the unknown word
2. Teachers asks for guesses and students hazard guesses
3. If not any students close, context clues leading to approximate meaning
4. If any students close, justify choices
5. Teacher elaboration
6. Backup
It can be seen that in almost all of the mentioned approaches, teacher explanation and
modeling of the strategy is essential at the beginning stage, followed by student practice.
2.4.5. Review of related studies
A number of studies have investigated the effectiveness of the strategy of guessing meaning
from context on the improvement of word-attack skill in particular and reading strategy in
general. Three related studies (Mei, 2005) will be described in detail and discussed below.
Mei (2005) examined the impact of direct instruction on the learning of the strategy of
guessing from context and the use of the strategy in coping with unknown words in reading
materials among young local ESL learners. The instruction programme was conducted in two
English classrooms in a local average-ability school. Data were collected from the students of
these two classes on their perception of their mastery of the strategy before and after the
instruction programme through questionnaires. Besides, two achievement tests (the pre-test
and post-test) were done to compare the actual performance of students in the use of the
strategy before and after the instruction programme. Qualitative data from lesson observation
and interviews with both students and teachers were collected to triangulate with the
quantitative data. The findings of the study show that students do benefit from direct
instruction in the learning of the strategy of guessing from context. Their metacognitive
awareness of the strategy was found greatly enhanced. The actual performance also supports
this conclusion. Data from lesson observation and the interview with teachers suggest that the
different beliefs of teachers had impacted greatly on the teaching approaches they adopted,
which in turn determined the results of the student performance. The author suggested that