شبكة المعلومات العربية التربوية

This research examined how six female native Arabic-speaking English as a second language (ESL) graduate students at universities in the United States use cognitive strategies to understand unfamiliar academic vocabulary in texts from their own (either statistics or education), and the other field of study in English and in Arabic. Data sources included a questionnaire to each participant about their academic backgrounds, a questionnaire about their vocabulary strategy use, a semi-structured interview, and a think-aloud activity with four different texts. For the think-aloud activity texts from the fields of statistics and education were used (with one from each field in Arabic and one in English). Analyses involved qualitative coding of the think aloud activity to create descriptions of each participant’s approaches to text as well as cross-case comparisons. Participants’ responses exhibited evidence of feeling anxiety, cultural, family, school, and teachers influences, and ways in which learning environments, and educational backgrounds affected their second language acquisition. Analyses of the think aloud revealed that there were different patterns for each participant in terms of how they interacted with the texts as well as how they approached processing unfamiliar vocabulary in the texts. Some participants read the passages aloud, and then when they faced new vocabulary or information, they silently completed the reading. Others read aloud only the passages that were from their fields. The participants’ local behaviors and body language were observed while reading. The results showed, as a group, that participants used the same 25 strategies with Arabic and English texts. Strategies used included many “general strategies” that have been described in the extant literature (e.g., paraphrasing, inferencing, questioning, using background knowledge, and comprehension monitoring). In addition, analyses revealed a variety of more “local” strategies, not yet described in the literature, including using an electronic dictionary, mixing L1 and L2 when working to understand an unfamiliar word, and creating shortcuts for cited names that were not essential to comprehension. There were individual differences participants’ patterns in reading the passages and approaches to dealing with comprehending unfamiliar words in the texts. (Author’s abstract)