The effects of explicit teaching of context clues at undergraduate level in EFL and ESL context

Abstract

The effects of a 6-session intervention targeting contextual analysis on reading comprehension were investigated in undergraduate university classes, assigned randomly to treatment and control conditions. According to the quantitative analysis of the study, in comparison to control group, using context clues strategy caused an effect on reading comprehension of the EFL and ESL students in experimental group who were taught in how to use different context clues while reading, without considering the role of proficiency level and gender as a variable because there was no interaction between them and strategy use in this study. Thus, implementing context clue strategy as a learning tool deserves more attention by college English instructors in both EFL and ESL context. On the basis of the major findings in this research, college English teachers should keep the students better informed of the significance and specific functions of context clues in contextual guessing and should encourage the students to guess word meanings from context instead of inhibiting it when there are adequate context clues offered.