| Author: | Chan, Steve Tai-fuk |
| Title: | An exploration of guessing patterns of the college students with varied English proficiency |
| Degree: | M.A. |
| Year: | 1996 |
| Subject: | English language -- Study and teaching (Secondary) -- China -- Hong Kong Vocabulary Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Department of English |
| Pages: | iv, 98 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Guessing strategies are commonly taught in most of the Hong Kong secondary schools, as it is believed that it will enable students to enhance their reading proficiency, as stipulated in the curriculum designed by Curriculum Development Committee (CDC). This study aims to explore what kinds of strategies students with varied proficiency will employ to infer the meanings of words, what reasons for their using a particular type of strategy, and what reasons for their failure to identify the word meanings? On the basis of Haynes' research design and methodology, twenty students were selected and interviewed in this study. It was then concluded that their vocabulary power and the world knowledge would determine how well and accurate they could guess the meanings of unknown words. These twenty students were further divided into two groups (i.e. the high achievers and the low achievers). The study showed that the high achievers mainly used the syntactic clue to make lexical inferences, while the low achievers did not rely on any particular kind of guessing strategy to make guesses. A split-plot design (ANOVA) 2 X 2 X 2 was used to test the correlation between the guessing accuracy and the subjects' English proficiency. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| b12465367.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 3.05 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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