Investigating English multiple-meaning word recognition of Thai EFL students of grade 11 of a private school in Songkhla, Thailand /
Many words in English are naturally ambiguous in terms of meaning. This aspect of mental lexicon has become a considerable problem, especially among EFL learners. It is crucial to raise the students' and teachers' awareness on the issue and explore effective strategies or methods that woul...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Kuala Lumpur :
Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences, International Islamic University Malaysia,
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://studentrepo.iium.edu.my/handle/123456789/6589 |
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| Summary: | Many words in English are naturally ambiguous in terms of meaning. This aspect of mental lexicon has become a considerable problem, especially among EFL learners. It is crucial to raise the students' and teachers' awareness on the issue and explore effective strategies or methods that would facilitate their vocabulary learning. This research aims to investigate students' level of receptive knowledge of multiple-meaning words, their capability to recognise the meaning of the words in relation to two popular strategies, which are using a bilingual (English-Thai) dictionary and guessing meaning from context, and their problems related to the meaning recognition of the words. The respondents were 100 Thai grade 11 students from SongsermSasana Vitaya Foundation School, Hat Yai, Songkhla, Thailand. Quantitative methods were employed through the analysis of two word meaning tests, which involved ten English multiple-meaning words. The results revealed that most students are at the intermediate level of receptive knowledge of the words. The difference between the two strategy groups in terms of meaning recognition was not statistically significant. In addition, the strategy used to derive word meanings does not correlate with the students' meaning recognition score. Some problems related to the meaning recognition were found, particularly with the extended meanings of the polysemous words. An important pedagogical implication for this study is that English language teachers should put more emphasis on the multiple meanings of words to enable Thai students to recognise polysemous words both receptively and productively. The instruction and training on how to employ different strategies are also needed to help students cope with the words and derive their meanings efficiently. |
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| Physical Description: | xiii, 97 leaves : illustrations ; 30cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (leaves 85-92). |