The Relationship between Vocabulary Learning Strategy and Vocabulary Acquisition
L2 learners’ vocabulary strategies development can be an important determinant of vocabulary learning (Nation, 2001; Oxford, 1990; Schmitt, 2000). Vocabulary learning strategies can give language learners a proper way with conscious and unconscious processes to deal with the vocabulary efficiency without interrupting the flow of reading too much (Nation, 1990). Schmitt and McCarthy (1997) stated that there are two methods of vocabulary instruction which are explicit vocabulary instruction and guessing the meanings of a new word from context.
Explicit teaching was fundamental for learners to understand most frequent words.
This method took learners a lot of time to process unfamiliar words largely in reading. On the contrary, inferencing from context without disturbing the flow of reading could lead learners to new words’ knowledge including its collocations, additional meanings, and the other higher level knowledge. It is an effective vocabulary instruction to equip the learners for both methods. Good language learners take a more active part in using a variety of vocabulary learning skills to construct their vocabulary learning (Bengeleil & Paribakht, 2004; Cain, Oakhill, & Lemmon, 2004; Liu & Nation, 1985; Pulido, 2003; Soria, 2001;
Thornbury, 2008; Walters, 2006; Zhang & Koda, 2012). They develop vocabulary knowledge by multiple exposures to the meanings of words from extensive reading
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rather than instruction with specific vocabulary drills. Therefore, high-level learners can acquire many words rapidly.
Oxford (1990) divided 62 strategies into two major classes: direct and indirect strategies. The direct strategies highlight language learning with directly involving the target language and letting learners direct pay attention to vocabulary (Nation, 1990).
Memory strategies, cognitive strategies, and compensation strategies are under the direct class. Memory strategies which referred to mnemonic for helping students store and retrieve new target language information by creating mental linkages, applying images and sounds, reviewing the material in the target language. Cognitive strategies for helping students understand, organize and produce message in the target language. Four sets of cognitive strategies contain practicing, receiving and sending messages, analyzing and reasoning, and creating structure for input and output of the target language. Compensation strategies are used to help students make up for lacking knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. Two sets of compensation strategies included guessing strategies for listening and reading skills and compensation strategies for speaking and writing skills. The
strategies of guessing words from context which referred to use linguistic and nonlinguistic clues for deriving the meaning of new word have a lot of influence on learners’ listening and reading competences. The guessing strategies which used eight skills, such as mine or gesture, asking someone for help, and using synonym have a lot of influence on learners’
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speaking and writing competences.
The indirect strategies provide indirect support for language learning. It divided into three groups connected with meta-cognitive strategies, affective, and social strategies. In terms of meta-cognitive strategies, when learners focus on learning activities, they plan, monitor, and further evaluate the final product of a task. This process belongs to
meta-cognitive strategies. Affective strategies refer to lower learners’ anxiety, teach students how to encourage themselves, and how to make judgments about their feeling when learners try to understand the new language. The three sets of strategies are associated with affective strategies. As to social strategies, asking questions, increasing cooperation and empathy with others are connected with social strategies. The applications of indirect strategies which were used in combination with direct strategies would be the most effective approach on language learning.
Nation (1990) mentioned three strategies for dealing with unknown words, including using context clues to guess words from context, mnemonic techniques of keyword, and analysis of prefixes, roots, and suffixes. As Nation suggested the strategy of guessing from context is the most important and powerful, so it is necessary for students to practice until they are familiar with the guessing process and the uses of contextual clues. According to Oxford (1990) and Nation (1990), inferencing strategy from context belonging to the direct vocabulary learning strategies of compensation will be adopted in this study.
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The Relationship between Vocabulary Knowledge and Reading Comprehension
According to Schmitt (2000) learners’ vocabulary knowledge is strongly related to their reading comprehension. It is generally recognized that a learner’s vocabulary knowledge is the best predictor of their reading comprehension since vocabulary knowledge is an important factor for increasing or decreasing reading comprehension (Anderson & Freebody, 1981; Cain, Oakhill, & Lemmon, 2004; Paribakht, 2005; Prior, Goldina, Shany, Geva, & Katzir, 2014; Qian,1999; Zhang & Kod, 2012). While English reading research has largely confirmed effects of vocabulary knowledge on reading comprehension, most of such research has suggested that the means through incidental vocabulary learning from context might be useful in enhancing students’ reading ability to comprehend well (Ahmad, 2011; Huckin & Coady, 1999; Nagy, Anderson, & Herman, 1987; Nation, 2001; Paribakht & Weshe, 1999; Sternberg, 1987).
Not only vocabulary knowledge can benefit EFL students’ reading comprehension, but reading comprehension can facilitate them to further expand in vocabulary knowledge.
For learners, vocabulary knowledge was certainly learned through reading and that reading could expand the size of vocabulary knowledge.
Hwang (2012) argued that how four variables such as reading comprehension ability, reading strategy, background knowledge and word knowledge contribute to incidental vocabulary learning. The results indicated that each of the four variables was a significant
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predictor of their incidental vocabulary learning. That is, the better the students’ reading comprehension ability was, the more they acquired the vocabulary knowledge broadly (Anderson & Freebody, 1983; Nagy, Anderson, & Herman, 1987; Hwang, 2012; Qian,1999;
Stahl, 1999; Tavakoli & Hatami, 2012). If students can understand the words covered in contexts from 95% to 98%, they can comprehend the text smoothly. As Laufer and Sim (1985) noted that when EFL learners make good use of lexical inferences in reading comprehension, the amount of vocabulary was required to surpass 95% coverage of the text for adequate reading comprehending.
Researchers usually consider the components of vocabulary knowledge, Richards (1976) and Nation (1990) supposed that knowing a word means knowing about its many aspects. The various aspects of word knowledge consisted of the different meanings of a word, the semantic value and frequency of a word, the collocations of a word, the
grammatical features of the word, the use of word parts, the associations of a word, and the appropriateness and the limitations on the use of a word. When learning a word, the
construction of these types of a word knowledge may occur to learners.
A lot of researchers usually distinguish two major dimensions of vocabulary knowledge in their relationship to reading comprehension (Qian,1999). One is size of knowledge, or breadth of knowledge and the other is the depth or quality of knowledge (Anderson & Freebody, 1981). The first one refers to the quantity of vocabulary learners
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know. Lewis (2000) highlighted that important distinction between high and low
proficiency learners’ ability was to compare with the size of their vocabulary knowledge not in their grammatical knowledge. The other one, depth of knowledge means the degree or quality of lexical knowledge learners equipped with. That is, depth of knowledge refers to how well a student can comprehend in different components of a word. Qian (2002 ) stressed that the breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge are closely and powerful with each other and positive interaction with reading comprehension. The findings showed that using a combination of vocabulary size and depth items could predict reading performance much better than using one alone. Similarly, in recent large-scare studies, results from the 2009 and 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress [NAEP] (2012) indicated that the students with more vocabulary knowledge are related to those with better reading comprehension performance.
Contextual Analysis in Incidental Vocabulary Learning
Context has been defined in general feature of morphological, syntactic, and discourse information within a text (Nation & Coady, 1988). Context clues based on the text can be used to examine the sentences before and after an unknown word. With synonyms, antonyms, definitions, examples, appositive words for clues, learners can understand unfamiliar words easily (Baumann, Font, Edwards, & Boland, 2005). Baumann et al. (2002) reported that fifth-grade students who were provided twelve 50-minute
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lessons on combined instruction in morphemic and contextual clues outperformed students who were no explicit instruction on vocabulary strategies. Nation and Clarke (1980) suggested readers can take and practice the five steps inductive procedure which is based on language clues for examining if the guess is accurate when they encountered a new word. The guessing strategy consisted of five steps is also discussed further in some study (Nation, 1990, 2001; Nation & Coady, 1988). The five steps for guessing from context are these:
Step 1. Look at the unknown word and try to determine its part of speech in the sentence.
Is it a noun, a verb, or adjective? For example, a –ing or –ed ending might imply there is a verb.
Step 2. Look at the words’ immediate collocations to discover the relationship between the unknown word and the known words in the clause or sentence. If the unknown word is a noun, does it have an adjective to modify it?
Step 3. Look at the wider context including the unknown word and examine the role of the unknown words in the surrounding sentences, clauses, or paragraphs. If there is a conjunction such as but, and, because, etc. that may provide useful clues related to the unknown word in context.
Step 4. Make the guess by using the above three steps.
Step 5. Check the guess if it is correct.
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a. Compare the part of speech of the guess with the unknown word and make sure that the right word has focused on.
b. The guess takes place of the unknown word and then consider if the word makes sense.
c. Analyze the word part and see if the meaning of the parts relates to the guess.
d. If the learners are unable to guess the suitable meaning of the unknown word from above steps, using the dictionary could be the last way of examining in step 5.
The basis of all the procedures points at linguistic clues instead of background context knowledge. Because linguistic information can be found much easily than background clues in every context, language clues will lead to more vocabulary learning (Nation, 2001). It is easy and helpful to make good use of linguistic clues for students when they derive untaught word during reading.
Many researchers have widely agreed that incidental learning of vocabulary through extensive reading with practice in guessing word meanings from context brings the
benefits for vocabulary learning (Huckin & Coady, 1999; Kuhn & Stahl, 1998; Nagy et al., 1985; Nassaji, 2003; Nation, 2001; Oxford, 1990; Paribakht & Wesche, 1999; Tekmen &
Daloglu, 2006). The concept of incidental vocabulary learning is similar to infer the meanings of unknown words during normal reading (Nagy et al., 1985). Students acquire
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vocabulary knowledge from guessing the meanings of untaught words while reading.
Incidental word learning may recognize more than words meaning. Simultaneously, some knowledge of form and semantic relation has been retained as well. Also, Nation (2001) indicated the most important of all sources of vocabulary learning was developed through incidental learning via guessing from context. In incidental vocabulary learning, the message usually is transmitted by an oral context or reading context while the learners’
attention is focused on some other feature, such as communicative purposes (Schmitt, 2000).
If the amount of unknown vocabulary is low in such messages, quite a little vocabulary learning can occur even though the learners’ attention is not directed toward vocabulary learning. Such incidental learning which has been called “incidental” has different interpretation by Paribakht and Wesche (1999), most vocabulary learning take place naturally when learners exposure in various reading or listening activities, the learners have to focus their attention on comprehending meaning of reading and listening contexts rather than word learning itself. During this reading program, a certain extent of vocabulary acquisition can be achieved incidentally.
Hwang (2012) revealed that the only high and intermediate English students inferred the meaning of unknown words better when they had background knowledge about texts before reading because background knowledge can be helpful to learn vocabulary
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knowledge incidentally. Additionally, the results showed there was a positive correlation between reading comprehension ability and the lexical inferencing ability for the
participants. In other words, stronger students might derive vocabulary knowledge more in incidental learning than weaker students (Pulido, 2003).
In the past, researchers have conducted many studies of effectiveness of training learners to use incidental and intentional vocabulary learning. As Alemi and Tayebi (2011) found there was no significant difference between the two conditions on learning L2 vocabularies. Success in vocabulary learning may not depend just on the use of certain techniques. The direct intentional vocabulary learning which can solve the problem for lower proficiency students in limited size of words combines with incidental learning of vocabulary which may be a useful way for most competence learners. Both two vocabulary instructional techniques coordinated will benefit for all language students (Guo, 2010;
Huckin & Coady, 1999; Waring, & Nation, 2004).
Contextual Analysis in Reading Comprehension
Wade (1990) described that it is very important to focus on general reading
comprehension process. This process can be categorized two main categories of cognitive theory as bottom-up models and top-down models. The bottom-up models, learners construct meanings of text from the smallest units such as letter recognition to lexical meaning. Readers process the meaning of the content by step-by-step decoding the
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linguistic information. On the contrary, the top-down models refer to learners’ processing information from the universal to the specific. That is, readers use background information to enhance understanding of a text. Strategies for top-down processors may need to make reasonable inferences with prior knowledge and more adequately information from the text.
A lot of researchers thought top-down theory was like a constant process of guessing with using contextual information. Therefore, the role of reading comprehension in contextual guessing is also a top-down processing with complex different information sources while reading (Brown, 2007; Fromkin, Rodman, & Hyams, 2007; Goodman, 1967; Siping, 2014).
Many studies have found that the effects of contextual guessing on most readers’
reading comprehension (Clarke & Nation, 1980; Fraser, 1999; Hudson, 2011; Paribakht &
Wesche, 1999; Nation, 1990; Nassaji, 2003). Guessing from context is an important
strategy not only for the identification of the main ideas in a text but also for the advantage without interrupting the flow of reading (Bengeleil & Paribakht, 2004). Goodman (1967) claimed that reading is a psychological guessing game for predicting what the meanings of the text, reader needs to understand the text by other similar known words or prior
knowledge to guess the meaning. Vocabularies are presented in a context, a person’s vocabulary is the best predictor how well they comprehend text. However, the same word may have been mixed various meanings in various contexts. An appropriate context helps
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learners to use basic meanings and background knowledge to make sense of text. An important point to make guesses as correct as possible for successful reading
comprehension is to train learners to make good use of contextual clues in context (Hudson, 2011).
According to Fraser (1999), the main lexical processing strategy used by learners while reading is inferencing. Learners have to obtain information from their background knowledge and contextual clues when making inferences. This additional mental effort for word identification processes enhances the reading comprehension and vocabulary
acquisition. In other words, L2 learners will likely benefit from instruction that guessing from context for adequate text comprehension.
Contextual Analysis and Learners’ English Proficiency
Research has revealed that several factors are likely to contribute to a successful contextual inference for individual learners. Nagy (1997) noted whether the learners using strategy successfully depended on their prior knowledge bases they have. Nagy divided learners’ knowledge bases into three main categories: linguistic knowledge, world
knowledge and strategic knowledge. Second language research points out that poor readers have some problem in lexis identifying and poor text comprehension, so they need to be encouraged to expand some strategic knowledge like inferencing strategy for solving above problems (Hudson, 2011).
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Adopting an introspective method as a research tool, Paribakht (2005) indicated that contextual factor and learners’ factors are the two wide classifications to lexical guessing.
Contextual factors contain some elements such as the number of times an unknown word occurred in the text, the importance of the unknown word to text processing and
comprehension, word density affect guessing from context, text length, comprehension task and word characteristics, and the existence of contextual cues. From different
component in context-related factors, it reflected that the application of vocabulary and the characteristics of task and text being used in inferencing are likely to influence learners’
inferencing behavior while reading. Additionally, various individual differences in reader-based factors containing some elements such as the learners’ background
knowledge, the size of vocabulary knowledge, the frequency of strategy use and learners’
proficiency levels have been observed (Cain, Oakhill, & Lemmon, 2004; Hwang, 2012;
Kanatlar, 2009; Lewis, 2000; Shen & Wu, 2009). From above components of
learner-related factors, Nassaji (2004) proposed that differences in lexical knowledge learners used and learners’ levels of proficiency play a great role in inferencing process.
Shen and Wu (2009) presented that technical university EFL learners’ reading proficiency affected the lexical inference performance. The findings indicated the more proficient readers demonstrated better performance on inferring meaning from context works and used strategies relatively more often (Pulido, 2003; Shen & Wu, 2009; Soria, 2001; Walters,
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2006; Zhang & Koda, 2011).
Liu and Nation (1985) conducted a study to investigate the factors to affect guessing the unknown words from context. This study produced three results. First, the long density passage is easier to guess than the short passages. Second, verbs are the easiest to guess in the part of speech of a word. Finally, the higher proficiency learners more succeed in guessing the meanings of unknown words by using context clues than the lower
proficiency learners. Thus, it appears that word density, part of speech, and proficiency level did play a greater role in inferencing factors. In addition, Tekmen and Daloglu (2006) addressed the relationship between learners’ incidental vocabulary acquisition and three levels of proficiency. The results of their study demonstrated vocabulary growth from reading were significant for each group. The advanced proficiency learners were able to acquire more words than lower proficiency learners (Tanyer & Ozturk, 2014).
Walters (2006) conducted a study with three training conditions to compare the effect of these teaching methods and the different levels proficiency. One is to train participants to use a general strategy which consists of five steps from Clarke and Nation (1980) for inferring the meaning of unknown words, another is to train participants to use contextual clues to infer the meaning when reading, and the other is to train participants a series of cloze exercises with the feedback of teacher correction. The result showed that a significant difference in the context clues is the advanced learner group for greater gains on
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the reading comprehension test. However, the beginning learners outperformed the intermediate learners in five-step strategy condition group. In short, these different teaching techniques for training students to infer the meanings of unknown words from
the reading comprehension test. However, the beginning learners outperformed the intermediate learners in five-step strategy condition group. In short, these different teaching techniques for training students to infer the meanings of unknown words from