Effectiveness of using word-guessing strategies in enhancing the ability of understanding the meaning of words in classical writings

Abstract

這次的研究──「字義猜測閱讀法對提升學生古文字詞理解能力的研究」，範圍主要集中在「配詞法」、「拆字法 / 偏旁推導法」及「上下文推斷法」這三種字義猜測閱讀法，藉此探討字義猜測閱讀法能否提升學生的古文字詞理解能力。 本研究會透過比較學生在前測及後測的表現，並參考學生在問卷調查及訪談中所表達對這三種字義猜測閱讀法的看法，然後以量性及質性的方式去分析，以探討「配詞法」、「拆字法 / 偏旁推導法」及「上下文推斷法」這三種字義猜測閱讀法對提升學生古文字詞理解能力的成效。 經過量性及質性的分析，本研究發現：「配詞法」、「拆字法 / 偏旁推導法」及「上下文推斷法」這三種字義猜測閱讀法，對學生整體的古文字詞理解能力有所提升。

This article aims at investigating the effectiveness of using word-guessing strategies in enhancing students’ ability of understanding the meaning of words in classical writings. And it mainly focus on three word-guessing strategies, they are ‘vocabulary-forming method’, ‘radical-guessing method’ and also the method of word-guessing by looking at the preceding part of the text. The research examines the outcomes by comparing students’ performance in the pre-test and the post-test. Students were taught the word-guessing strategies between the pre-test and the post-test. Besides, they were asked to fill in a questionnaire after the post-test, so as to know about their feelings towards these word-guessing strategies. Moreover, three students of different levels were invited to have an interview after the post-test, in order to investigate the effectiveness of using word-guessing strategies in a deeper way. After analyzing the research data in quantitative and qualitative way, research findings show that word-guessing strategies are effective in enhancing students’ ability of understanding the meaning of words in classical writings in general, as students show improvement in their post-tests.