A Study On Word Guessing Strategy In Senior High School English Teaching

Reading comprehension is always the most important part in English teaching. And vocabulary plays an important role in reading comprehension. There are a lot of effective ways to improve reading comprehension, and word guessing strategy is one of them. Word guessing strategy means that students make a guess at new words according to various clues like definition, logic, punctuation and common sense rather than consulting to a dictionary. Recent studies conducted by researchers have showed that the word guessing strategy has a positive impact on reading comprehension ability improvement and vocabulary enlargement. But the subjects of the studies are limited in professional education. Few studies have been conducted on the secondary education subjects, the relationship between word guessing strategy and reading comprehension, and the strategic impact on vocabulary. To further understand the relationship between word guessing strategy in terms of word-building clues, definition clues, and logical clues and English teaching, a study on the impact of the word guessing strategy has on English teaching has been conducted.In order to train students of word guessing strategy to improve their reading comprehension ability, a research lasting three months has been in process in two classes in Xiaoshan No.5 High School. Class One is the control class(CC), while Class Two is the experimental class(EC). Students in Class Two are trained of word guessing strategy for three months while Class One are trained in conventional teaching mode. The research is divided into three stages. Tests, surveys and interviews have been done in the research. And the data are analyzed by the SPSS 16.0 software to prove the significance of word guessing strategy in reading comprehension.The questions raised in the study are as follows.(1) To what extent can the word guessing strategy help students in reading comprehension?(2) Which strategy is the most effective by the view of students (word formation clues, meaning explanation clues and logical relationship clues)?(3) To what extent can word guessing strategy help students in learning strategy?According to the study on word guessing strategy, the thesis draws following conclusion.(1) From the results of the post-test, it can be seen the EC does better with the help of word guessing strategy in it than in the CC. Since the tests are composed of translations and guessing from context, and the results indicates a positive effect word guessing strategy has on learners’guessing ability, reading comprehension and vocabulary acquisition.(2) It can be found from the results of questionnaires, interviews and immediate tests that logical relationship clues method works best among the three. Because logical relationship clues are the most regular cases in the exam and it is quite easy and convenient for learners to locate the signposting word, which can help with the problem solving. And logical thinking is more interesting compared to the other two, which can not only cultivate learners’complex thinking ability in English learning.(3) It can be concluded from the interviews that high-score learners reflect that they sometimes have known the target words so there is no need for them to guess while low-score students suggest that there are lots of unknown words in the context that it is not possible for them to guess the meaning of the target words from context. As a result, word guessing strategy works better in intermediate-level students.(4) Word guessing strategy has a positive effect on vocabulary learning strategy. Before the experiment, learners acquire new words by drills and recite mechanically from glossary. Now learners have been aroused awareness of applying word guessing strategy in vocabulary acquisition. However, guessing words correctly doesn’t mean acquiring the word, including part of speech, pronunciation, phrases and etc. Further tests and practice should be conducted to enhance the acquisition.The results and findings can give enlightenment to the vocabulary learning strategy as well as reading teaching.