Enhancing Students' Vocabulary Acquisition Through Guessing Strategy In Reading Context

Studies indicate that referring meanings of unknown words through context clues can enlarge learners' vocabulary size. Based on the relevant theories and studies, the research was undertaken to examine two questions: (1)Can the guessing strategy effectively enhance college students' vocabulary? (2) Does the original vocabulary size influence the training result? Which group of students achieves more, the advanced or the poor? The research was conducted through the following procedures:Firstly students took a pre-test on vocabulary size. It showed that students in both classes had very little vocabulary.Then the students in the experimental class (EC) were trained to derive meaning from the context clues for 16 weeks. It included five stages: teacher's presentation of signal words and examples; teacher's offering leading questions; teacher students working together; students working cooperatively and students' individual practice. Students did exercises on about 500 words.After that, a post-test on students' vocabulary size was given to see if there was an obvious increase, and an interview was carried out to collect students' views on the instruction.Finally, the conclusion was arrived: (1)The guessing strategy can effectively enhance college students' vocabulary although theirvocabulary was limited at the beginning. The students' average vocabulary size is 851 (EC) to 872 (CC) in the pre-test, but it is 1356 (EC) to 1048 (CC) in the post-test. There is a large gap between the two classes. (2)The students' original vocabulary size does influence the training result. The advanced students achieve more than the poor ones. What's more, students in EC become more interested in vocabulary learning and their reading ability has been improved greatly.