The most common
of the four skills tested is reading. How to best assess reading ability in EFL
context has made language testing researchers interested for a long time.
Reading proficiency is empowering and a hallmark of academic success
(Hagaman& Reid, 2008; Hall & Piazza, 2008; Paterson & Elliot, 2006;
Thomas & Wexler, 2007). Reading
offers opportunities and enlightenment (Hall & Piazza, 2008). Although
reading proficiency involves many student-centered factors, educators also play
an important role.
In English as a foreign/second language, reading comprehension tests
include a series of related items that are based on the same reading passage
(Lee, 2004). As Alderson (2000) argues, the selected text and test methods are
so effective in testing reading comprehension.
Critical
reading is definitely essential to ensure optimum intellectual development
among this community of learners in the universities, but their effort to
construct content knowledge by reading critically is frequently hindered by
inadequate mastery of the foreign language, especially in mastering vocabulary.
Vocabulary is an inseparable part of any language learning process
especially in reading class. It would be impossible to learn a language without
vocabulary. Rivers (1981) states that,
"vocabulary cannot be taught. It can be presented, explained, included
in all kinds of activities, but it must be learnt by individuals (p. 28). One
of the existing problems in the mastery of vocabulary is the number of
unfamiliar words in textbooks or other supporting texts for students.
Unfamiliar words still becomes one of the significant obstacles in reading
comprehension, probably due to the insufficient vocabulary knowledge. Nowadays,
the difficulty levels of vocabulary substantially affect the readability of
reading texts and—sequentially—comprehension (Alderson, 2000a; Coady, 1993;
Nation, 2001; Stoller and Grabe, 1993; Williams and Dallas, 1984) and abundant
research has also provided empirical support to this finding (Calvo, Estevez,
and Dowens, 2003; Kusumarasdyati, 1996; Lotto and de Groot, 1998; Martino and
Hoffman, 2002).
It can’t be denied that reading comprehension is based on vocabulary
mastery. When the students’ vocabulary is poor, it can be assumed that they
will get difficulties in understanding reading text no matter it is long or
short text. What happens after that has been clear; they will have no good
reading understanding. Moreover the worst is they really don’t know nor
understand what the content of the text is. In this case the writer has a
problem with his reading class since the learners still do not really master
the vocabulary and their reading comprehension still need to be improved.
In reference to the explanations above
and the strong desire of
finding the solution of these problems, the writer has motivation to
do the research in improving the learners vocabulary and their reading
understanding by using context clues as the strategy in reading class. Context
clues are hugely important because their comprehension and effective usage
leads to academic success. They can increase the child’s vocabulary, reading
comprehension, and make children better readers (Tatyana, 2013).
Robinson (1976, p. 56) said that there are three ways to be familiar with
unfamiliar words. The reader should do wide reader that can help increase
his/her vocabulary, open dictionary, and using context clues.
Context clue is a pure linguistic study that can be categorized as micro
study because this research is a study about meaning and text. Wiener and
Bazerman (1986, p. 10) state that context clues are hints provided by the words
and sentences surrounding the unfamiliar word. Smith and Schulz (1982, p. 425)
define context clues as the words surrounding an unknown word often provide
clues to its meaning. Eanes (1997, p. 338) defines that Context Clues refer to
the use of surrounding word, sentence, and paragraph meaning to decode words or
determine their meanings.
There are many models in this context clues, such as Statement of
Meaning, Definition by Example, Definition by Synonym. Definition by
Experience, Definition by Description, Definition by Comparison, Definition by
Contrast, and Reflection of Intent, Mood, Tone, or Setting. Context clues are
divided into two types. They are the use of syntactic clues and the use of
semantic clues (Robinson: 1976). On the other hand, Spears (2000, p. 98) divides
context clues into four general types: synonym, antonym, example, and situation
clues. For this study, the researcher took three models from Spears; synonym,
antonym, and example and one model from Robinson; statement of meaning. Those
models were selected by researcher because that was the common part of reading
text which often appears and often we ignore. Besides, the purpose of this
study is to increase students’ reading ability. As we know that reading ability
is different with reading comprehension. In reading ability we focus more in
vocabulary mastery, while in reading comprehension is about understanding to
the whole reading content. Due to that difference it is suitable if the
researcher use context clues to improve students’ reading ability.
William (2014) who stated that context clues has some advantages such as,
the intention of vocabulary acquisition, stimulate critical thinking of reader,
it doesn’t need longer time than opening dictionary, can be useful to define
word meaning for any polysemous word depend on the context.
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