awej 5 no.4 full issue 2014

AWEJ Volume.5 Number.4, 2014Guessing from Context: A Saudi EFL ViewAl-Homoudof. BELMEKKI Proper guessing & IBRAHIMI does not necessarily lead to vocabulary learning. Thus, Al-Homoud (2008)asserts, it is true that guessing the meaning of a word from context slowly increases vocabularylearning Drid since that it is an intensive approach that needs a careful scrutiny for clues in the text,and that the number of words learned in a text (if guessed correctly) is very small. For example,Bensoussan and Laufer (1984) found that their subjects did not exploit the contextual cluesavailable for them in the text; therefore, they believe, “Leaving the question of vocabularylearning to chance or to the students themselves is highly impractical" (p. 26). This can be true ifstudents are told to exclusively use this strategy for enriching their vocabulary repertoire, and toignore other useful strategies. Consequently, learners are not advised to rely solely on guessingfrom context in their vocabulary building. Rather, they need to complement this skill with otherdirect and indirect strategies for increasing their vocabulary size and knowledge, e.g. using thedictionary, word cards, word lists, etc. Moreover, the subjects in Bensoussan and Laufer‟s (1984)study were novice learners. As established earlier, guessing from context requires a goodlanguage proficiency (Cziko, 1987; Nation and Coady, 1988). Moreover, these students seemednot to be familiar with the reading topic since they were from different fields of specialtiesreading a topic on anthropology. As has been also discussed previously, research has found thattopic familiarity is of a great importance to the skill of guessing. Furthermore, it seems that thosesubjects were not trained on how to guess the word‟s meaning from context. For example, someof them tried to twist the meaning of the whole context just to go along with the new guessedmeaning. Similarly, with polysemous words, Bensoussan and Laufer state that some of theirstudents failed to seek a meaning different from the one they already knew. Therefore, whenreading such studies one needs to be careful about interpreting their results. “This may be partlydue to poor design, but it is also the effect of the cumulative nature of such learning involvingonly small gains per meeting for most words” Nation (p. 236).Therefore, it is important that both L2 teachers and learners know that guessing fromcontext is incremental and, therefore, it needs time (Nation, 1990; 2001). Moreover, Nation(2001) believes that we should not look at guessing from context, which is incidental, as anopposition to the viewpoint that sees intentional, direct teaching is the best way for vocabularylearning. Rather, we should look at these views as being presented on a continuum where bothdirect teaching and indirect learning move according to students‟ needs and proficiency levels.Sokmen (1997: 239) also believes that the “pendulum has swung from direct teaching ofvocabulary (the grammar translation method) to incidental (the communicative approach) andnow, laudably, back to the middle: implicit and explicit learning”.Thus, Nation (2001: 238) draws our attention to three important issues when consideringthe small gains of vocabulary learning through guessing from context. These considerations areas follows:1. Reading does not only increase vocabulary learning, but rather it increases some otherskills and types of knowledge, e.g. grammatical patterns, text structures, andskipping. For example, through large amount of reading, L2 learners can meet otherforms of the word study, e.g. studied, studies, and studying as well as somecollocations that go with it, e.g. brown study, case study, course of study, house ofstudies, etc. (Merriam-Webster Online, 2004). Again, teachers should bear in mindthe fact that vocabulary learning proceeds incrementally (Nagy, et al., 1985).Arab World English JournalISSN: 2229-9327www.awej.org511