An Intervention-Study on Moroccan High Schoolers’ Difficulty in Comprehending Newly Encountered Vocabulary

Abstract

Vocabulary knowledge is an essential component in language acquisition and learning.  Such knowledge facilitates the reception, processing, and production of discourse. When the ‘know-what’ is hindered, learning is not achieved. The present study is conducted to arm EFL learners with ‘know-how’ strategies to decipher the meaning of newly encountered vocabulary. It is the result of attested observations that students’ comprehension and learning are hindered when they do not comprehend a word. Problems persist more when students do reading comprehension, grammar, or communication tasks. The purpose is to enable students with strategies to work out meaning and test the possibility of having those strategies become automated in the students’ cognition. For this, the researcher has adopted a quantitative approach to check the rate of students’ success at deciphering meaning. The study has three stages: pre-intervention, while-intervention, and post-intervention. The first stage is conducted to attest observations concerning students’ comprehension difficulties.  Here, the researcher provides a short paragraph with at least 10 difficult words and asks students to clarify them. The while-intervention stage consists of delivering a lesson with a learning objective of training students to use 6 meaning-deciphering strategies adapted from Schmitt’s (1997) and Nation’s (2001) taxonomies. The post-intervention is a complementary step to check the validity and success of the intervention. As the sessions proceed, learners show success in independent meaning-deciphering using an automated approach. This study shows that learners should be helped not by providing ready information but by equipping them with ‘learning how-to-learn’ strategies.