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Journal of Applied Studies in Language, Volume 1 Issue 1 (Dec 2017), p. 1—6
p-issn 2598-4101 e-issn 2615-4706 © Politeknik Negeri Bali
http://ojs.pnb.ac.id/index.php/JASL
1
Learners’ models enhance the development of learners’
reading and thinking strategies
Joyce Merawati
Politeknik Negeri Bandung
email: joyce.merawati@polban.ac.id
Abstract – This study was conducted to find the efficient way to teach
academic reading skills to non-English department students at tertiary
education. Based on the previous study, it was found that the students
found difficulty in reading academic texts because of their limited
vocabulary. Reading experts state that “good readers are good
guessers” (Nation, 2002). Further, He claims that the strategies of
guessing meaning from context is important strategy in reading.
Considering these statements, this study investigated reading class by
teaching the strategies of guessing meaning from context. Since this
study was conducted to solve the students’ perceived problem when
reading academic texts, it applied three-cycle qualitative inductive
action research together with the students. These three cycles were:
Cycle 1, the lecturer provided individual model of strategies, namely
identifying parts of speech, finding clues from contexts, and identifying
word parts; Cycle 2, the lecturer showed various models and gave
practices; and Cycle 3, some selected students demonstrated their
models to the class. Throughout this study, the students were
encouraged to write journals explaining the strategies applied when
they were guessing the meanings of words. The data was analyzed from
the students’ journals collected at the end of each cycle. The results
indicated that the students’ models were more efficient than the
lecturer’s. Learning and showing the strategies of guessing words from
context encouraged the students to develop their deep thinking
strategies when reading academic texts. The focus of this paper is on
the treatments to introduce the word guessing strategies to the students
in brief.
Keywords: reading strategies, guessing meaning from context, teaching
strategies
Journal of Applied Studies in Language, Volume 1 Issue 1 (Dec 2017), p. 1—6
p-issn 2598-4101 e-issn 2615-4706 © Politeknik Negeri Bali
http://ojs.pnb.ac.id/index.php/JASL
2
1. Introduction
English was a compulsory subject at tertiary education. Usually, the non-English
department students had to learn English at least one semester. The 2016 curriculum
run at Politeknik Negeri Bandung is still encouraged the non-English department
students to learn English at least two semesters. English lecturers at these departments
were often challenged by their students who usually did not have high motivation to
learn English because the students usually learned English to improve their speaking
skills. However, one of the institutional objectives was to develop students’ academic
reading skills. Therefore, English lecturers are advised to bridge these mismatched
expectations.
When teaching a language, teachers are advised to think of when and how a
language is acquired and learned. Some researchers (Krashen and Terrell, 2000) and
(Nunan, 1994) distinguish between “acquiring” and “learning”. “Acquiring” is a
subconscious process when the learners are picking up the language through rich
exposure; while ‘learning’ is a conscious process when the learners are consciously
picking and carrying out practices. The language learnt does not ‘turn into’
acquisition unless the input is comprehensible and practiced in a meaningful context
(Krashen and Terrell, 2000) as cited in Nunan (1994) and Brown (1994). Learning
will only take place when the matter to be learnt is meaningful to the learners
(Hutchinson and Waters (1989). This will only take place when the matter to be learnt
is interesting to the learners (Hutchinson and Waters (1989). Language teachers need
to provide acquisition rich activities, meaningful contexts, and provide meaningful
repetition through listening and reading before speaking and writing (Hadaway,
Vardell and Young, 2002).
The challenge arises when the language learners do not live in the English
speaking environment or they live at a distance from the target language community,
such as learning English in Indonesia. However distant they are, language learners
have similar learning process and purpose as those who learn the target language as
their first language, namely for communicating ideas orally and in written. Since
learning English in Indonesia only has limited time, the focus of teaching and learning
English at tertiary education is mostly focused on improving academic reading skills.
This is to prepare the students to enrich their majoring subjects by means of reading
from various academic texts. Therefore, this study was focused and conducted in a
reading class at a civil engineering department at Politeknik Negeri Bandung. The
purpose of this study was to discover the efficient way to improve students’ academic
reading skills but at the same time to cater for the students’ interests.
This study was conducted based on these claims: “good readers are good
guessers” (Nation, 2002). Further, readers are constructing and guessing the
meanings, and they read with a certain purpose (Nuttall, 1989). When guessing
meanings, they apply all their prior language knowledge such as their large
vocabularies, phonemic awareness, knowledge about text features, and a variety of
strategies (Paris, Wasik and Turner, 1991) and knowledge about the world. In
addition, Nation (2002) claims that the skills of guessing meaning from context are
important skills in reading.
Therefore, this study attempted to develop students’ reading strategies by
means of developing the strategies to guess the meaning of new words encountered
Journal of Applied Studies in Language, Volume 1 Issue 1 (Dec 2017), p. 1—6
p-issn 2598-4101 e-issn 2615-4706 © Politeknik Negeri Bali
http://ojs.pnb.ac.id/index.php/JASL
3
from context (GMFC). This was to cater for the students’ perceived problems, the
limited vocabulary, and to improve the students’ reading skills.
2. Method
This study was carried out to solve the students’ perceived problems, namely limited
vocabulary. It applied three-cycle qualitative inductive action research conducted
together with the students as the stakeholders. The main characteristic of action
research is the spiral activity consisting of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting
(Stringer, 1996) as cited in Merawati (2003). The data were collected from students’
journals at the end of each cycle. These journals contained the strategies applied when
they were guessing the meanings of new words appeared in the provided texts.
3. Results and Discussion
This part explains the treatments, results, and discussion of the study briefly. The
treatments were planned and conducted based on the results of students’ open
questionnaires and discussion with the students conducted at the previous studies
(Merawati, 2010). They were conducted to solve the students’ perceived problems i.e.
limited vocabulary; and the results were derived from the data, in the form of
students’ journals collected at the evaluation stages at the end of each cycle.
The study had three cycles of treatments. The treatments of Cycle 1 consisted
of five individual models run within four weeks. The first model was focusing on
identifying the part of speech of words of a text. The students were encouraged to find
the nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs or the contents words by means the word
positions in sentences – as subjects, verbs, objects, adjectives, or adverbs (McComish,
1985). The second model was to find clues of deleted words from the nearest context
to larger ones, namely words existed before and after the gaps and ones from other
sentences. The third one was to demonstrate and practice mature guessing namely
revising, refining and thinking critically. Then, the fourth model was to show
guessing strategies using diagrams and other typography clues such as punctuations,
bold, italic words, etc. Finally, the students were introduced the process of predicting
the meanings of new words from the parts of the words, such as ‘lighthouse’ from
“light + house”, and ‘remodeled’ from ‘re + model + ed’. The materials used to
introduce and practice these strategies were taken from various short simple authentic
texts.
Cycle 2 treatments were carried out for seven weeks. They focused on
practicing the process of guessing the meanings of unknown words whenever the
students met new words in short authentic texts. Other strategies were also introduced
i.e. activating the students’ prior knowledge, identifying the semantic relation of
words especially hyponyms and enlarging the readers’ scope of textual context
(Nation, 2002). In addition to give a lot of practices, the students were also
encouraged to collaborate when guessing some new words in groups.
Cycle 3 treatments which ran for three weeks were to provide practices and
allow the students to demonstrate their GMFC models. At the end of each class, some
selected students reported the process of guessing to the class orally. At this cycle, the
students had a lot of collaborative oral activities and they attempted to express their
Journal of Applied Studies in Language, Volume 1 Issue 1 (Dec 2017), p. 1—6
p-issn 2598-4101 e-issn 2615-4706 © Politeknik Negeri Bali
http://ojs.pnb.ac.id/index.php/JASL
4
logical reasons aloud by working in pairs or in small groups and presenting their
strategies orally in front of the class (Nation, 2002). The reading materials were
selected from various children encyclopedia. These materials were modified in such a
way that the texts stimulated the students to guess purely unknown words and enlarge
their textual scopes.
The treatments were evaluated by means of collecting students’ journals at the
end of each cycle. The improvements of guessing process were evaluated from
students’ abilities to make use of clues by identifying the words’ parts of speech and
finding clues from typography, word parts, and locations of the clues, expressing the
meanings of unknown words, and monitoring the results of their guesses.
The results of the students’ ability to identify the parts of speech of words
showed that these students had some language knowledge, namely syntax, and
structures (Mikulecky, 1990) so that they were able to construct meanings using
bottom-up approach (Aebersold and Field, 1998). The students’ ability to identify the
part of speech developed from 54% at the end of Cycle 1, to 43% at the end of Cycle
2; however, at the end of Cycle 3, it was going up to 92%.
The students’ abilities to find clues can be from word parts and word clues.
Their abilities to find word parts developed from 48% at the end of Cycle 1, to 12% at
the end of Cycle 2; however, it improved significantly to 62% by the end of Cycle 3.
Whereas word clues are function words such as ‘or’, ‘for example’, ‘to be’ and other
phrases such as ‘called’, ‘in other words’. The students’ abilities to find word clues
developed from 11% at the end of Cycle 1, and slightly increased to 20% at the end of
Cycle 2; and finally it reached to 21% by the end of Cycle 3. These abilities reflected
that when reading, the students or the readers were not focusing on each word but
they also looked at the pictures’ notes, signaling words and analyzed words.
The locations of context clues show the scope of contexts. This indicates that
when reading, students are not focusing on each single word, so that they are able to
link ideas and construct meanings from various clues scattered in different places in
the texts. This also proved that the students do not read texts linearly but they look the
words backwards and forwards and elaborate various tactics. The development of
students’ scope of context was started from reading linearly at the end of Cycle 1,
their scope of contexts was very limited; it was only 1% taken from the paragraph
before the new words. However, at the end of Cycle 3 their scope of contexts
increased to 31% clues taken from the previous paragraphs and 18% of clues taken
from the paragraphs after the new words. In other words, the students’ scopes of
context were enlarged and they applied more strategies than at Cycle 1.
The ability to express the meaning of new words indicated the students’
abilities to construct meanings of the new words based on the clues in the texts and
other associations built as a result of reading the texts. This process reflected the
students’ deep and critical thinking, because they attempted to integrate various
aspects of the texts such as the topic of the texts, the ideas of the paragraphs; then,
they link and check their guessing their prior knowledge and experiences.
The 3 cycles of treatments developed the students’ ability to describe the
meaning from 11% at Cycle 1 and 2 to 23% at Cycle 3. The students were also getting
flexible by providing multiple guesses. This flexibility improved from 5% at Cycle 1,
then 9% at Cycle 2, and finally increased to 11% at Cycle 3. This indicated that they
might need to revise the meanings or ideas later, as it was claimed in (Paris, Wasik
and Turner, 1991). The result of analyzing the students’ guessing process from their
Journal of Applied Studies in Language, Volume 1 Issue 1 (Dec 2017), p. 1—6
p-issn 2598-4101 e-issn 2615-4706 © Politeknik Negeri Bali
http://ojs.pnb.ac.id/index.php/JASL
5
journals indicated that at the end of Cycle 1 and 2, none students did monitoring and
checking the results of their guesses. After some students provided models in front of
the class in Cycle 3, the number of students who did this process increased from 0%
to 24%. This showed that the students were able to think deeply and moved towards
better readers because they applied more strategies when guessing.
The results of analyzing the students’ guessing process written in their
journals at the end of each cycle indicated that the number and the types of strategies
applied by the students were significantly increased. This reflected that the students
reading skills improved that good readers construct meanings maturely and always
monitor their comprehension; they are always ready to refine and revise and evaluate
their ideas in (Paris, Wasik and Turner, 1991).
Comparing the results of those three cycles, the result indicated that after some
selected students, either the good or the limited ones, gave models in front of the class
for three weeks, these students’ strategies developed significantly. The models
demonstrated the strategies slower and simpler, and they spoke slower and explained
the strategies in simple words and sentences. The language used and the strategies
demonstrated by the students were at the level of ‘comprehensible input’ (Krashen
and Terrell, 2000) so that those strategies were digestible. Learners’ motivation was
developed because they were able to practice to speak naturally by expressing what
they thought and experienced orally. As a result, the other students were willing and
able to imitate and apply more various strategies to guess the meanings of new words
from contexts.
4. Conclusion
When teaching English, lectures had to be able to bridge the mismatched
expectations. One of the institutional objectives was to develop students’ reading
skills. On the other hand, the students wanted to be able to speak English fluently; and
they were reluctant to read because of their limited vocabulary. Then, the lecturer
developed the students’ reading skills through developing students’ compensation
strategies namely guessing meaning from context. To cater for the students’
expectation, the lecturer developed the students reading strategies and skills by
integrating the four language skills. The students were encouraged to read and guess
the important new words encountered in texts. They had to wrote what they thought
by writing the strategies applied in their journals. Finally, they had to report and
demonstrate their strategies orally in front of the class. Comparing the strategies
written in the students’ journals collected at the end of each cycle, it was found that
the students’ strategies developed significantly after the models were presented by
some students. This indicated that the students’ models enhanced the development of
reading and thinking strategies.
References
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Journal of Applied Studies in Language, Volume 1 Issue 1 (Dec 2017), p. 1—6
p-issn 2598-4101 e-issn 2615-4706 © Politeknik Negeri Bali
http://ojs.pnb.ac.id/index.php/JASL
6
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