Contextual Factors in Guessing Word Meaning from Context in a Foreign Language

Guessing word meaning from context is one of the most favored vocabulary learning strategies among second language learners (Paribakht & Wesche, 1999). While inferring the meaning of an unfamiliar word, language learners use different types of clues including contextual ones (Paribakht & Wesche, 1999). The purpose of this study is to investigate whether Turkish EFL learners use contextual clues in guessing process or not. A vocabulary guessing test was administered to the subjects who were the students attending prep classes at the School of Foreign Languages of Uludag University. The results showed that unknown words in a rich context were guessed more successfully than unknown words presented in a poor context.