2013
DOI: 10.5539/ells.v3n3p1
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The Use of Dictionary and Contextual Guessing Strategies for Vocabulary Learning by Advanced English-Language Learners

Abstract: The present study provides insight into the use of dictionaries and contextual guessing by advanced English-language learners. This report identifies dictionary use and contextual guessing strategies used by these learners most often and least often. Participants were 100 international graduate students at a large southwestern U.S. university who completed a vocabulary learning strategy questionnaire. The results indicated that these learners consulted a dictionary most often to find out the pronunciation of a… Show more

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Cited by 22 publications
(27 citation statements)
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“…These are not direct, concrete sensory categories, but they still have examples in our direct sensorimotor experience: “That's you” and “that's another” (i.e., someone else). “That's good fortune” and “that's misfortune.” But it is more likely that higher‐order, more abstract categories like these would be grounded in verbal definitions composed of words that each name already grounded categories, rather than being grounded in direct sensorimotor experience (Aitchison, ; Huang & Eslami, ; Nesi, ; Summers, ).…”
Section: Direct Sensorimotor Groundingmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…These are not direct, concrete sensory categories, but they still have examples in our direct sensorimotor experience: “That's you” and “that's another” (i.e., someone else). “That's good fortune” and “that's misfortune.” But it is more likely that higher‐order, more abstract categories like these would be grounded in verbal definitions composed of words that each name already grounded categories, rather than being grounded in direct sensorimotor experience (Aitchison, ; Huang & Eslami, ; Nesi, ; Summers, ).…”
Section: Direct Sensorimotor Groundingmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Guessing may additionally depend on the learner's ability to make inferences or analyze words from his general language knowledge -by thinking about synonyms, antonyms, or provided examples -or parts of the words through the word's root or affixes (Fuentes, 1976;Lawson & Hogben, 1996;Nation, 1990;Oxford & Scarcella, 1994). Guessing alone is, however, sometimes considered to be unreliable (Huang & Eslami, 2013;Kaivanpanah & Alavi, 2008;Nation, 1990). Nevertheless, learners might prefer guessing than using other strategies as they may argue that creating a pause to check a word meaning from a dictionary for instance would waste time and lower the motivation to read by blocking the reading flow.…”
Section: Studies On Contextual Guessingmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Likewise, Ghazal (2007) mentioned that one way to lessen the burden of foreign language learners' challenges is to assist them by teaching them how to apply vocabulary learning strategies. Contextual guessing and dictionary use for example are two of the strategies that have been emphasized by a number of researchers (Bensoussan, Sim, & Weiss, 1984;Huang & Eslami, 2013;Ibrahim, 2012;Lawson & Hogben, 1996;Mokhtar, Rawian, & Fauzee, 2013;Prichard, 2008;Sultana, 2014) in order to examine the vocabulary learning strategies of English as second or foreign language learners. The present paper emphasized the frequencies of encouragement by teachers and the frequencies of use by learners of contextual guessing, dictionary, pronunciation, and flashcards as vocabulary learning strategies for high school English language learners.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…According to Nation (2001), learning vocabulary through guessing from context is the most important of all sources of vocabulary learning. Many educators encourage the contextual guessing strategy, which refers to the use of background knowledge and linguistics cues to infer the meaning of unknown words (Kaivanpanah and Alavi, 2008: as cited in Huang and Eslami, 2013). If learners do not know a word, they discover its meaning by guessing from structural knowledge of the language, guessing from an L1 cognate, guessing from context, using reference materials, or asking someone (Schmitt, 1997).…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%