Page 71 - Apuntes de Investigación en la Enseñanza de Idiomas

55 Apuntes de Investigación en la Enseñanza de Idiomas

Coping with Unknown Vocabulary through

Conscious Inferences

Esteban Juan Bautista Zárate Mejía

Universidad Veracruzana

Key words: conscious inferences, reading, strategies, think-aloud, vocabulary.

Reading in a foreign language is a difficult endeavor for English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners,
especially when they read an English text. Mainly, it is owed to unknown words the text contains.
Therefore, the aim of the present study is to discover the while-reading strategies five students from
a beginning reading and writing course at the School of Languages, University of Veracruz applied
when reading a non-academic text. Consequently, the research question was Which are the reading
strategies EFL learners apply to cope with unknown words when reading a non-academic English
text? For achieving the research purpose and answering the research question, it was conducted a
qualitative case study which research instrument is a think-aloud protocol. This study revealed that
there were three reading strategies used to cope with unknown words: combining reading styles,
combining skills and strategies, and making conscious inferences, which was the most used reading
strategy. The conclusion of this study states that students should be encouraged to use more strate-
gies for decrypting vocabulary when reading a non-academic text.

Literature Review

Foreign language readers’ most common reading problem is dealing with unknown words. This fact
may happen due to some language items that are difficult for readers to understand. Such items can
be complex syntax -long sentences with subordinate clauses that may result unintelligible-; advanced
cohesion -refined writing style peculiar of literature-; and poor writing -a text that contains ambiguous
punctuation or ideas illogically ordered- (Frankfurt International School, 1996).

Additionally, reading problems may have a cognitive element. For instance, readers may face some
troubles at relating ideas that express commentary with ideas that concern the topic of the text. Ad-
ditionally, they may not be able to identify easily the formal structure of the text. Therefore, they have
trouble at understanding what the text is trying to tell them (Lau, 2006).

On the other hand, reading strategies are those conscious actions that readers apply when they are
reading a text (Coiro & Dobler, 2007). For instance, relate what they are reading to what they already
know, identify and learn unknown words, comprehend and study a written text (Tompkins, 2014; Up-
ton, 2004). For instance, translation, note taking, and contextualization. Additionally, skimming and
scanning, identifying main ideas, analyzing vocabulary, and summarizing.