Improving Vocabulary Acquisition through Contextual Clues in English Reading Lessons

This action research investigates the effectiveness of the contextual clue strategy in enhancing vocabulary acquisition among Form 1 students in a rural school setting.Students in these areas often encounter challenges in understanding and assimilating new and complex vocabulary within reading comprehension tasks.Consequently, the contextual clues strategy emerges as a potential solution to address this issue.The objectives of this study are twofold: to assess the effectiveness of contextual clue strategies in improving vocabulary acquisition and to explore students' perceptions regarding the use of contextual clues for inferring the meanings of unfamiliar words.The research involved a pre-test, an intervention, and a posttest to evaluate the appropriateness of the contextual clues' strategy for vocabulary acquisition among rural students.During the intervention phase, guided practice was implemented through Think-Pair-Share sessions to facilitate the application of contextual clues.The results revealed a notable improvement in student performance, with 79.2% demonstrating improvement when comparing pre-test and post-test outcomes.Additionally, students expressed a positive perception of this strategy, noting that it not only facilitated their vocabulary acquisition but also increased their confidence in reading English texts.Therefore, the findings advocate for a more extensive and focused approach that includes the integration of multimedia tools or gamified applications, which are particularly appealing to younger learners.