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SCO-KOHNSTAMM INSTITUUTThe training of a word learning strategy: results in process and product

Drs. M. van Daalen-KapteijnsDr. C. Schouten-van ParrerenDr. K. de Glopper

SCO-report 463

KOHNSTAMM

Daalen-Kapteijns, M.M. van

The training of a word learning strategy: results in process and productMaartje van Daalen-Kapteijns, Carolien Schouten-van Parreren, Kees de GlopperAmsterdam : SCO-Kohnstamm Instituut, Faculteit der Pedagogische en Onderwijskundigewetenschappen, Universiteit van Amsterdam(SCO-rapport : 463)Met lit. opg.ISBN 90-6813-517-1Trefw : vocabulary ; verba! learning

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Copyright © SCO-Kohnstamm Instituut, 1997.

The training of a word learning strategy:results in process and product

Authors:

Maartje van Daalen-KapteijnsSCO-Kohnstamm Institute

Faculty of Educational SciencesUniversity of Amsterdam

Carolien Schouten-van ParrerenPsychology and Pedagogical Sciences

"Vrije Universiteit"

Kees de GlopperSCO-Kohnstamm Institute

Faculty of Educational SciencesUniversity of Amsterdam

SCO-report 463May 1997

word learning strategy

PrefaceThis paper reports the results of the training of a strategy to infer wordmeanings from context.The research was supported by the Institute for Educational Research(SVO: grant numbers 93501 and 95734) and was performed in the SCO-Kohnstamm Institute of the Faculty of Educational Sciences of theUniversity of Amsterdam from 1993 to 1995.

We thank the members of the 'HogCog' studygroup for their usefulcomments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Table of contents

Abstract 2Introduction 3Theoretical basis of the training program 5Setup of the training program 6Description of the Word Learning Strategy (WLS) 7The design of the experiment 11Analyses of the product results 13The think-aloud sequel to investigate the inference process 14Protocol differences between trained and control students 18Analysis of the process codes 18Analysis of the definitions as the products of the think-aloud process 23Summary of the differences between trained and control students 26General conclusions and discussion 28References 32Appendix A 35Figures 1 to 3 37Table 1 38Tables 2a to 2e 39Table 3 41Table 4 42Tables 5 and 6 43Tables 7.1 and 7.2 44

2 word learning strategy

AbstractThis paper reports a study into the effects of a rich instructional

procedure on the process and product of learning to infer word meaningsfrom written context. The product effects were measured in an experimentwith paper-and-peneil tests, while the process effects were assessed in athink-aloud sequel.

An experimental design was used in which students were allocatedto an experimental and control condition by blocking. Thirty two grade-six primary school children followed eight training sessions in theirmother tongue (Dutch) and 32 control students followed their regularlessons in which no special attention was given to learning from context.The training consisted of text-driven, wordschema-driven and self-regulatory elements, and was given in the form of general cognitivestrategy instruction. On a paper-and-pencil test of skill in inferring wordmeaning from context, the difference between the scores of theexperimental and control group was 0.2 standard deviation, which isstatistically not significant. Think aloud-protocols of 16 trained and 16untrained students were analyzed to obtain insight into how often andwith what quality elements from the training course were used. Trainedstudents, in comparison with the untrained ones, more often used text-driven and self-regulatory elements. No difference was found forwordschema-driven elements. The higher frequency of use of the elementsmentioned did not go together with significantly higher quality of theword meanings inferred. The results are discussed in relation to thecontent of the training given and the inherent difficulty of the inferencetask.


Introduction

The importance of vocabulary knowledge in a variety of tasksinvolving verbal information processing has been widely acknowledged.Vocabulary knowledge plays a major role in reading comprehension(Beek, Perfetti & McKeown, 1982; Kameenui, Carnine & Freschi, 1982),and is therefore strongly related to success in school (Jenkins, MatlockSlocum, 1989). The question of how children acquire and expand theirvocabulary has been investigated by theorists and researchers (McKeown& Curtis, 1987). One of the research methods has been to exploreindividual differences in vocabulary knowledge and word learning ability(Shefelbine, 1990). One of the aims of this kind of research is to findways to improve vocabulary learning and instruction.

The two most prominent instructional approaches are directteaching of individual words and teaching skills that promote independentlearning of words. As it is impossible to teach huge numbers of wordsthrough direct instruction, many vocabulary studies are focused onteaching vocabulary skills. Using context is one of the most frequentlyexplored skills (Sternberg & Powell, 1983; Graves, 1987; Buikema &Graves, 1993). This is potentially a very useful skill because with eachyear of schooling students are confronted with a growing amount of textsthat provide opportunities for inferring word meanings.

A previous study (De Glopper, van Daalen-Kapteijns & Schouten-van Parreren, 1997) shows that skill in inferring word meaning fromcontext is substantially correlated with vocabulary knowledge. Inferringword meaning from context is a very complex skill (cf. Van Daalen-Kapteijns & Elshout-Mohr, 1981). This is probably why a number ofintervention studies bas tried to reduce the complexity of this skill.

In the first place, some intervention studies have focused on only apart of the skill, e.g. by training students to use a limited set of contexteines, such as synonym and contrast clues (Carnine, Kameenui & Coyle,1984; Patberg, Graves & Stibbe, 1984). One of the problems with thetraining of clues is that some of the more helpful ones occur only rarelyin natural text (Graves, 1987, p. 173). The generalizability of the effect ofsuch training is therefore limited.

In the second place a reduction of the complexity of the skill hasbeen attempted by choosing a specific kind of target word for training. Inmany interventions the target words (often nonsense words or lowfrequency words) can be substituted by a relatively simple synonym orexpression (for instance the word 'oam' meaning 'steam', in the study bySternberg & Powell, 1983). In such interventions hardly any target wordsoccur for which the meaning can only be given by using a more complexdescription, for instance in the form of a superordinate and one or morespecifications. An example of such a target word is the word 'receipt' thatwe used in the study presented here, meaning 'a written acknowledgementof something received'. In interventions working with a set of relativelysimple target word meanings, no instructional help is given which isdirected at finding the meaning of more complex ones. This may be one

4 word learrdng strategy

of the reasons that most training studies have resulted in no more thansmall gains. Still, as Beek & McKeown conclude (1991, p. 803), "thepotential importance of context as a vocabulary-learning source and theapparent difficulty in fully utilizing that source warrant a continued searchfor more effective instruction".

In the study presented here, we have made an attempt to developan enriched and possibly more effective instructional procedure. We didso by combining different instructional elements in order to preparestudents to deal with the task of inferring word meaning from context inits full complexity. The training contained not only elements that workbottom-up from the context, but also elements that work top-down fromknowledge about the structure of word meanings. Besides these "text-driven" and "wordschema-driven" elements, some self-regulatory elementswere part of the training. In this way, we tried to teach students to handleall kinds of words, that is, also words for which no simple synonymexists and whose meaning has to be described in a more complex form.As far as we know, testing such an enriched instructional procedure,directed at the full complexity of the inference process, has not beenattempted before. In this study we trained students (primary schoolchildren, aged 11-12 years) of the whole verbal ability range; in thisrespect too, we tried to avoid a limitation of some previous studies whichtrained students of a more restricted verbal ability range.

As there is little experience with such an instructional procedure,we assessed not only the quantitative results in the form of the productsof the training, but also the qualitative results, i.e. the relevant processaspects of the students' performance after training. In this way we tried togain insight into how the different training elements worked out and withwhat effect. Process aspects of the inference skill are also receiving moreattention in other recent studies, such as that by Goerss (1995) and byGoerss, Beek & McKeown (in preparation).In the present study, the instructional procedure sketched above has beentested in order to answer the following research questions. To whatdegree is it possible to teach students to infer word meanings fromcontext in its full complexity? What is the role of the various trainingelements on the process and product of the inference activities by studentsthus trained? Possible transfer effects of the training from Dutch toEnglish as a foreign language are also explored.

In the next section, the training program is described in detail inorder to give a clear picture of its constituent elements and the wordlearning strategy in which these were embedded.


Theoretical basis of the training programLet us look first at the situation in which students read a piece of

text and encounter an unknown word. Different actions can be taken,depending on a variety of task and learner variables. If the studentsunderstand what the text is about and are not hindered by the presence ofthe unknown word, they will probably read on because there is no need tostop and think about what the word might mean. If they understand thethrust of what the text is about, but full comprehension is hindered by theunknown word, they have a motive for trying to figure out the wordmeaning in order to help comprehension. If they also have come toappreciate reading as a source for vocabulary learning, they might makean extra effort to reflect on the inferred word meaning as such.

Figuring out a word meaning from context is like trying to pullyourself up by your bootstraps. How is it possible to infer the meaning ofa word from a context that is not fully understood because of the vergpresence of the word? We think a solution to this paradox can be foundby considering the beginring and the end of the inference process.

Working from the textThe ground from which one wants to pull oneself up may have

one or more footholds in the form of clues to the meaning of the word;these clues can be used in a text-driven or bottom-up process. Clues canbe found in the word itself and in the surrounding text, especially whenthe text is redundant.

Working from a schemaIf one knows what it usually takes to define a word meaning, this

kind of knowledge can be used in a schema-driven or top-down process.Students can actively search the context for the necessary. definitionalinformation. If the student has knowledge of the make-Up of definitions,he can go and search the context to fill the empty slots of the schema.

DecontextualizationSomehow the text-driven and schema-driven processes must be

attuned to one another. In the ideal case, the text-driven search formeaning is steered from the schema and information found in the contextis decontextualized in order to give it a form that fits the schema. Theperson searching goes back and forth between context and schema untilthe fit is satisfactory. An important means for the purpose ofdecontextualization is 'negotiation of meaning'. The issue to _be negotiatedis to what extent the information found is context-specific and to whatextent it can be generalized. The student, in this negotiation, must weighthe contextual information against the 'conventional' form thatdefinitional information usually takes.

Our analysis resembles the process distinction of Sternberg (1987).Sternberg distinguishes three processes that come into play when a new


word is learned from context. The first process, called 'selectiveencoding', entails separating information that is relevant for the meaningof the unknown word from irrelevant information. This process operatel(in our view) mainly on a text-driven basis. The second process,'selective combination', would in our view operate mainly on a schema-driven basis, as in this process a selection from the relevant informationfound in the context about the new word is combined to form adefinition. 'Selective comparison', the third process in which newinformation is integrated with information already in memory, could havethe function of a go-between, just as decontextualization has.

Setup of the training programWe constructed a training program that would stimulate students

to use botte text-driven and schema-driven processes in order to arrive at adecontextualized meaning of the target word. The training materialconsisted of 'pedagogical contexts' (Beek, McKeown & McCaslin, 1983)meant to give relevant information about the unknown word withoutstating the definition. We tried to make the contexts as natural as possibleby describing situations in which the word typically occurs. We did notsystematically vary the types of clues provided, but saw to it that varioustypes of clues occurred in different contexts.

As a first help in working on a text-driven basis, we wanted toteach students to use the sentence in which the unknown word occurs as astarting point for the inference process by deleting the unknown word tomake a ' cloze sentence'. A second help was a set of questions to be askedof the context in order to gather information about the word meaning.This set consisted of six 'Wh-questions': What ..., Who WhereWhen ..., Why ... and How ...? The questions are along the same lines asthe '20 questions' used by Sternberg (1987) in a training program forlearning word meanings from context intended for students older than inour case (high school sophomores and juniors). We taught our students touse the six questions as examples for ones that they would like to ask ofthe context themselves.

We also wanted to make students aware of the information that aword itself may reveal about its meaning. We wanted them to look forthis kind of information by 'zooming in' on the word. At the same time,we told them explicitly to use this kind of information to check theinformation gained from the surrounding context. This procedure preventsstudents from making a wild guess on the basis of the word itself, andconsecutively twisting the interpretation of the context to confirm thisguess (Nation, 1990, p. 163, warns about this kind of twistmg.) Byzooming in on the word as a check on information gathered from thecontext, a student combines working on a text-driven basis with the useof knowledge about word form and word parts.

As a help in working on a schema-driven basis we wanted tomake students familiar with the form that most word meanings take. Forthat purpose we introduced a 'Definition Schema' to them (see Figure 1):


[Figure I here]

The Definition Schema resembles the Word Map that Schwartz &Raphael (1985) use for vocabulary learning. What we call 'generalcharacteristic' is the 'class' component in the Word Map, and the'spectfic characteristic' has its equivalent in the Word Map under theheading of 'What is it likeT The Word Map comprises a thirdcomponent: 'What are some examplesT, information about subordinatesthat is not represented in the Definition Schema. Schwartz & Raphaelsuggest that it is possible to teach primary school students in the middlegrades and above to use the Word Map as a help in vocabulary learning.

An important part of the training program is decontextualizationthrough negotiation of meaning in a dialogue between the trainer and thestudents. The exact content of the dialogue is not prescribed, because ithas to be tailored to the suggestions and reactions of the students. Thisissue is closely connected with the instructional approach of the trainingprogram. (See also the separate section on the instructional approach).

Self-regulatory elements form the last ingredient of the trainingprogram. One element consists of making students aware of unknownwords that they may encounter in contexts and of the different ways theycan react when this happens. Such awareness is a condition that has to bemet in order for the student to engage, in some situations at least, indeliberate attempts to infer the meaning of the word from the context. Asecond self-regulatory element in the training program is the stress placedon the need to check the information derived from the context in thissame context and in new contexts yet to be encountered.

• Description of the Word Learning Strategy (WLS)We tried to combine the principIes mentioned above in the form

of a coherent strategy, called 'Word Learning Strategy'. It is made up ofthree tactics that can be executed in consecution.

Tactic 1: the 'Brake-tactic' is meant to be used on encountering anunknown word. This tactic makes students aware of unknown words theycome across while reading text.

Tactic 2: the 'Track-tactie' is meant to track down the meaning of theword. The 'Track-tactic' is the heart of the strategy. It consists of anumber of steps; the first is to make a 'cloze sentence'. This is a sentenceor part of a sentence from the text in which the unknown word isreplaced by dots. The second step is to ask a few Wh-questions on thebasis of the 'cloze sentence', the answers to which are to be found in thesentence itself and in the surrounding sentences. The students could useWh-questions that are provided or make up one or two by themselves. Itis made clear that a question does not necessarily have to start with a'Wh-word'. The third step is to find, from the information thus gathered,one of two things: another word with the same meaning (a synonym); or,


if this is not available, a definition made up of a general characteristicand one or more specific characteristics. The answers to the Wh-questionsmust somehow be transformed into information that fits the definitionformat. So it is in this step that the actual decontextualization must takeplace. The fourth and last step of the 'Track-tactic' is to check whetherthe solution (synonym or definition) fits in the context given.

Tactic 3: the 'Zoom-tactic' embodies zooming in on the word itself inorder to find out whether this yields information that confirms the wordmeaning inferred so far.

The tactics were summarized on a Strategy Card that the students coulduse during training.

Instructional approach and number and structure of the lessonsThe students were trained in groups of eight by 'general cognitive

strategy instruction' (Rosenshine & Meister, 1994). The role of the trainerin this kind of instruction is a modeling, guiding and checking one. Everynew part of the training was first modeled by the trainer, who demonstra-ted what she wanted the students to learn while thinking aloud. In thesecond step the students as a group tried to do the same with a differentexample, in interaction with the trainer who guided and steered them.After that the students practiced what they had learned for themselves, orin couples, while the trainer checked what they were doing. The essentialparts of the training program (making a cloze sentence and asking Wh-questions, using the Definition Schema, decontextualiation and zooming

. in) were all taught in these three steps.To teach the Word Learning Strategy, eight lessons of

approximately one hour were constructed with Dutch material. In additionto these, two lessons were constructed for practicing the strategy withEnglish words. This was done in order to explore possible transfer effectsfrom Dutch to English. For Dutch students, English is taught as a foreignlanguage in grades five and six. Our sixth grade subjects, at the time oftraining, had had formal instruction in English for about one and a halfschool years.A short description of all ten lessons is given below. The trainer workedfrom a trainer's guide in each lesson, and the students worked in abooklet of their own.

At the beginning of every lesson, reference is made to what wasdone in the previous one. Then the subject matter of the lesson ismodeled by the trainer or practiced by the students under the guidance of(and checked by) the trainer. During the lessons the students fill outpractice schemas, with room for the cloze sentence and the Wh-questions,and for a synonym or a definition for the new word. Every lesson endswith a few reflection questions that are answered by the students forthemselves and are then discussed in the group.

To make the lessons stimulating the practice items for the studentstake different forms. Some items have the form of a game. Others have a


form resembling the 'vignettes' that Palincsar & Brown (1989) used intheir instruction for self-regulated reading. In such vignettes the studentsread the account of an imaginary pair of children who have used theWord Learning Strategy to figure out the meaning of an unknown word;they then discuss the way this was done.

The words used in the lessonsTo construct the training material, words were chosen from a

dictionary that defines Dutch words for Dutch students in graden 5through 8 (Huijgen & Verburg 1987). Words were selected that we, andgrade 6 teachers, presumed would be unknown to students in grade 6.Among these were difficult words referring to a well-known concept, forwhich the students would probably know a synonym (a translatedexample is 'accuracy' as the synonym for 'preciseness'). But most of thewords selected referred to a meaning that was at least partly new,consisting of, for instance, an unknown refinement of a well-knownmeaning. An example is the word 'anecdote' as a refinement of the moregeneral meaning of 'story'.

The Word Learning Strategy was introduced and practiced withnouns, nouns being the largest category of words in natural language.However, the students also practiced with verbs and adjectives. In thecase of adjectives, special attention was given to the Definition Schema.The students were instructed in this case to look only for specificcharacteristics that specified the noun to which the adjective refers.

For the English lessons, difficult English words were selected fromappropriate textbooks. Care was taken that the contexts of the targetwords were made up off, words that most students would be familiar with.

The contexts used in the lessonsThe contexts for the unknown words were constructed as

'pedagogical contexts'. One context per word was offered, describing asituation in which the word was fairly typically used. It was made clear tothe students that one context is not enough to determine the definitemeaning of a word, but that it is often enough to get a good hunch aboutthe meaning, that can be checked when the same word is encounteredagain. We hoped in this way to make students aware of the fact thatknowledge of a word is not .an all-or-none matter, but that it developsgradually.

Example of the modeling phase of the instructionOne of the practice items reads as follows:I don't know much about my grandfather but some anecdotes.This is the anecdote that my father likes best: how my grandfather,as a young man, once fell through the ice. Grandfather thoughtthat he would get less cold without all those wet clothes. So hetook everything off except his pants. That is how he came home,with icicles hanging off his moustache and eyebrows. It must havebeen a funny sight. We have to laugh every time my father tells it.

10 word learning stralegy

Students would typicaliy proceed as follows, in interaction withthe teacher.They start out using the 'Brake-tactic', by stopping at the word 'anecdote'and underlining it. Then they go on using the 'Track-tactic' to track downthe meaning of 'anecdote'. In the first step they make a 'cloze sentence'such as 'This is the that my father likes best'. In the second stepthey ask a few Wh-questions on the basis of this cloze sentence. In theleft-hand column of Figure 2 possible Wh-questions are given, and in theright-hand column possible answers to these questions are indicated.

[Figure 2 here]

In the third step the students try to find, from the information thusgathered, a synonym or a definition. In the case of 'anecdote' nosynonym is available, so a definition has to be made up, consisting of ageneral characteristic and one or more specific characteristics. Thedialogue that guides the decontextualization process would take thefollowing form (slightly different with different groups of students, as ithad to be adapted to the specific reactions of the students):Trainer: 'So what we have got is: an anecdote is a story that makes uslaugh and that is about my grandfather going through the ice. What doesthat teil us about the meaning of 'anecdote'? Does it tell us somethingabout a general characteristic? About what sort of thing an anecdotemight be?'A student: 'An anecdote is a story about my grandfather'.Trainer: 'Right, here it is a story about my grandfather, correct. Wouldthat always be so? Is ah anecdote always a story about my grandfather, orcould it also be a story 'bout someone else?'Most students think that anecdotes might be about other people, so onlythe general characteristic 'is a story' is written down in the definitionschema. The dialogue is continued with the trainer reacting to what thestudents say as much as possible while guiding them towards a more orless context-free meaning for anecdote.Explicit attention is given to the uncertain status of the informationinferred. 1f the answer to the second Wh-question 'it makes us laugh' istransformed into the specific characteristic 'is funny', the trainer discussesthe need to check this when the word 'anecdote' is encountered in adifferent context.To conclude the dialogue, a definition is formulated on the basis of theinformation in the schema and written down on the bottom line.Figure 3 shows what the schema now contains:

[Figure 3 here]

In the fourth and last step of the 'Track-tactic' the students check whetherthis definition fits the context given.To conclude the inference process the students use the '.Zoom-tactic'.They look at the word 'anecdote' to find out whether the word itself

11 word leaming strategy

contains information that would confirm the meaning inferred so far.However, zooming in on 'anecdote' does not give any clues. Then thepractice item is concluded by looking up the definition of the word in thedictionary. This reads (translated from the Dutch): 'a short story, usuallyabout a funny- event in somebody's life'.The trainer and the students discuss the dictionary definition incomparison with the definition as inferred from the context. The mainpoint in this discussion is not the correctness or incorrectness of thedefinition inferred, but rather the status of the information found. In theexample of 'anecdote', the trainer points at the piece 'it is about mygrandfather falling through the ice when he was a young man'. Lookingback, this could have been decontextualized to 'an event in somebody'slife'. The trainer adds that, strictly speaking, you cannot tell from thissingle piece of text what applies only to this text, and what applies to themeaning of 'anecdote' in general; and that repeated occurrences of theword must gradually make this more clear.

The design of the experimentTo assess the effects of the training program we used an

experimental design with blocking (Campbell 84 Stanley, 1963). Studentswere assigned to matched pairs, and then one member of each pair wasassigned to the experimental group, the other to the control group.

Firstly, effects on the products of the students' inference activitieswere measured by the results on pre- and post-tests for inferring wordmeaning from context. Vocabulary pre-tests were used as covariates tocontrol for the effect of verbal ability. Reading comprehension post-testswere included to measure possible transfer effects. Secondly, we exploredthe program's effects on the students' inference processes in a think-aloudsequel. We first describe the experiment and the assessment of theproduct results. The think-aloud sequel is then reported.

SubjectsIn order to select experimental and control students we started out

by pre-testing Dutch elementary school children (11 to 12 years old) infour sixth-grade classes from four different schools. On the basis of theresults of these 93 students on the pre-test for skill in inferring wordmeaning from context, 16 students from each class were selected, 4 fromeach quartile of scores. From each set of 4 students, 2 were randomlyassigned to the experimental condition and 2 to the control condition. The32 experimental students were to be trained in groups of eight studentseach, and the 32 control students were to follow their regular lessons.

Training and control programThe students in the experimental condition followed the training

program described above, consisting of ten weekly one-hour lessons, eightwith Dutch material, and two with English material. The lessons were


given during school hours. The control students took part in the regularprogram in which no special attention was given to inferring wordmeaning from context.

TrainerAll four experimental groups were trained by the same instructor,

who had also given the lessons in their try-out version. She was trained towork along the guidelines that were provided in the trainer's manual.Before each lesson, several possible ways of going about the wordlearning items were discussed with one of the researchers, in order toprepare the trainer as well as possible for her interactive teaching task.

Measures for the product resultsMeasures were paper-and-pencil tests, taken at three moments (see

also Table 1). Four tests were administered at moment 1, three weeksbefore the training started; three tests at moment 2, about 10 days afterthe eight lessons with Dutch material had been given; and two tests atmoment 3, one week after the two English lessons. In the following, themother tongue (Dutch) is indicated by Ll, English as a foreign languageby EFL.

Tests of skill in inferring word meaning from contextThe tests of skill in inferring word meaning from context are

abbreviated throughout by SIWMC-tests. The L I SIWMC-test has twoparallel versions; version A is administered at moment 1 and version B atmoment 2. Both contain 25 open-ended items. Version A was used toselect experimental and control subjects (see the subsection 'subjects'above.) Version B is the main criterion task for the training program, asthe test items are constructed in the same way as the training items.

The, EFL SIWMC-test has three parallel versions; version A isadministered at moment 1, version B at moment 2 and version C atmoment 3. All three contain 12 open-ended items. Version A is used as acovariate; Versions B and C are intended as measures of near transfer ofthe skill to infer word meanings from context.

Before the administration of each SIWMC-test, knowledge of thetarget words was checked in a short pre-test. The target words werepresented underlined in short non-informative sentences. The studentswere asked to indicate if they knew anything about the meaning of eachunderlined word, and if so to write down what they thought the wordmeant. If a student had any knowledge about a word (and this was theexception), the corresponding item in the S1WMC-test was not taken intoaccount for this student and the student's score was estimated on the basisof the remaining items.

Vocabulary testsThe L 1 Vocabulary Test (moment 1) contains 60 four-choice

items. This test is used as a covariate in the analysis of covariance to takeinto account pre-existing differences in vocabulary between students.


The EFL Vocabulary Test (moment 1) is made up of 64 open-endeditems. Like its L1 counterpart, it is used as a covariate.

Reading comprehension testsThe Ll Reading Comprehension Test contains 24 four-choice

items. This test is intended as a measure of transfer of the skill ininferring word meanings to text comprehension. This transfer can beexpected if the students, trained in the thorough analysis of a piece of textin order to find information about an unknown word, use the same kindof analysis to better understand what the text is about.

The EFL Reading Comprehension Test consists of five stories ofabout ten lines each; four comprehension questions are asked about eachstory (resulting in 20 items). This test, like its L1 pendant, is meant tomeasure any transfer that occurs from the inference of word meanings totext comprehension.

HypothesesThe main hypothesis is that the trained students, compared to their

control classmates, have improved their skill in inferring word meaningsfrom context in Ll, resulting in higher test scores on the L1 SIWMC-testversion B. If confirmation of this hypothesis is found, three otherhypotheses are put forward: improvement in inference in L1 showstransfer to improvement in inference in EFL for the trained students;improvement in inference in L1 transfers to improvement in readingcomprehension in L1 for the trained students; both improvements transferto improvement in reading comprehension in EFL.

Analyses of the product results

AnalysesAnalyses of covariance were used to compare the results of the

experimental and control students at moment 2 and 3. Measures taken atmoment 1 were used as covariates, in order to partial out pre-existingdifferences on relevant variables. Dependent measures at moment 2 were:the Ll S1WMC-test Version B, the EFL SIWMC-test Version B, and theL1 Reading Comprehension Test. Dependent measures at moment 3 were:the EFL SIWMC-test Version C, and the EFL Reading ComprehensionTest.

The internal consistency (coefficient alpha) of the dependentmeasures mentioned above ranges from .68 to .97 (see Table 1). For alldependent measures the homogeneity of variance was tested bycomputing Cochran's C; the p-values concerned ranged from .48 to .83,meaning that this condition for analysis of covariance is fulfilled.

ResuitsMeans and standard deviations for all measures are given in Table

1. The analyses of covariance are summarized in Table 2a to 2e.


[Table 1 and Table 2a to 2e here]

We tested at alpha =.05. As Tables 1 and 2a show, the difference in meanscores between the experimental and the control students on the mostrelevant dependent measure, L1 SIWMC-test (B), with L1 SIWMC-test(A) and L1 Vocabulary as covariates, is not significant. The effect size ofthe training program on the L1 SIWMC-test (B), estimated by taking thedifference between the mean scores of the experimental and control groupand dividing this by the pooled standard deviation: (8.52 minus8.24)/3.76, is .074 (Hedges Olkin, 1985). Correction for attenuationdue to measurement error results in an effect size of .084.

The absence of a significant difference on the L1 SIWMC-test (B)makel it understandable that no difference is obtained on the EFLSIWMC-test (B) and (C), as these two tests were meant as measures ofnear transfer. No difference was found either, on the measures of fartransfer (L1 and EFL Reading Comprehension).

The think-aloud sequel to investigate the inference processTo assess the process effects of the training program, a think-aloud

sequel was conducted, in which we gathered think-aloud protocols fromtrained and control students. This sequel is described in the next section.

SubjectsWe selected 16 trained students from the whole range of scores on

the L1 SIWMC (B) test. Four students came from quartile 1, three fromquartile 2, four from quartile 3 and five from quartile 4. These students,and their 16 controls, were asked to take part in an individual think-aloudsession. The sessions were run a few weeks after the training programhad ended.

The words and contexts usedTen difficult L1 (Dutch) words were selected (see Appendix A),

that we expected to be unknown to the students. We chose ten words(eight nouns and two verbs) that refer to relatively complex concepts, andfor which no simple synonyms exist, because we expected these words togive rise to rich inference processes. The students would have to find outto what concept each unknown word refers and give a description of itsmeaning by using more than one word. Three difficult EFL (English)words (one noun and two verbs) were selected in the same way as wasdone for the lessons.

The contexts for the unknown words were constructed in the sameway as described for the training material, that is as 'pedagogicalcontexts' (Beck, McKeown & McCaslin, 1983), meant to give relevantinformation about the unknown word. Each context described a situationin which the unknown word was fairly typically used.


ProcedureThe trained students were given the instruction to infer the

meaning of the underlined word in each piece of text, while thinkingaloud. They were given one or two practice items to ger used to thethink-aloud situation. The material that they had used during training wasavailable on their desk: the Strategy Card and practice schemas. Theexperimenter told the students that they could use this material if theywanted, but that they didn't have to. The control students did not havematerial from the training program at their disposal, but in all otherrespects the procedure for them was the same as for the trained students.

A session per student consisted of two rounds, each round lastingabout half an hour. In round 1 the items were handled in the followingway. For each item the experimenter would ask: "do you know themeaning of (the target word)?". If the meaning was known (which wasthe exception) the item would be skipped. If the meaning was unknown,the student read the piece of text aloud and tried to infer the wordmeaning from it while thinking aloud. The role of the experimenter waslimited to occasional encouragement to the student to keep thinking aloud.If the student was satisfied with what he or she had figured out about theword meaning, he or she told the experimenter to write down the resuhon the word list that the experimenter had before her. This momentmarked the end of the item. After all items were worked through in thisway, round 1 was concluded. The think-aloud material, gathered duringthis first round, is considered as the protocols proper.

Round 2 consisted of a retrospection of what had been writtendown on the word list in round 1. The material from round 2 was used tosolve ambiguities in the round 1 material.

Sessions were recorded on audiotape for each student, resulting in32 think-aloud protocols for 8 to 10 items in L 1 and 3 in EFL. The L 1material resulting from round I was analysed in the way described in thenext section. The material concerning EFL will not be reported here.

Analysis of the protocols, resulting in process codesThe protocols of the 32 students were transcribed from tape, in

order to be coded for the presence or absence of elements from thetraining program. To code the occurrence and the quality of elementsfrom the training in the protocols a coding manual was developed.Thirteen training elements were coded as present or absent; for theelements present a quality code was given of 0, 1 or 2 for the cases thatthe element was used wrongly, half correctly or correctly, respectively.Note that the elements do not exclude one another. Theoreticallyspeaking, each of the items could contain all elements, because thestudents were free to produce as many utterances and guesses whilethinking aloud about an item as they wanted. Nevertheless, in mostprotocols only a number of elements is present.

Coded were parts of protocols within an item that form ameaningful unit, being made up of one or more related utterances. Thecodes assigned are listed below and illustrated by examples. The contexts

16 word leaming strategy

used for the ten target words are given in Appendix A.

01 Using a cloze sentence. A protocol part was coded 01when the literal sentence in which the target word occurred wasused as a storting point to get an idea about the target's meaning,by deleting the target and considering the gap, or by filling out aword that might mean the same as the target. An exampleutterance is: "Dilemma, yes, it is a real dot dot dot ..."

02 Using a Wh-question. A protocol part was coded 02 whena Wh-question was asked concerning the content of the situationdescribed in relation to the target word. An example is the way inwhich the student, quoted above, continues: "'What is happeningwith dilemma?', well, she does not know what to choose!"

03 Using the word form to get information about the wordmeaning. Code 03 was assigned to protocol parts in whichattention was given to the form of the target word, for instance toa constituent and its meaning. An example is given by the studentwho, looking at the target word 'personalia' remarks: "well, theword already tells it a bit, of a person, is already in it a bit ..."

04 Checking the word meaning in the cloze sentence. A veryclear example of a code 04 utterance is given by the student whohas inferred the meaning of 'receipt' as: "a kind of proof that youhave returned the videotape". He or she continues to substitute thismeaning in the sentence in which the word 'receipt' is presented:"yes, that fits in it, I think, 'In most video hire shops you can askfor a proof that you have returned it properly if you are returninga videotape' .. yes, so that fits".

05 Checking the word meaning in the whole fragment of text.An example of this more global checking is given by the studentwho infers that a dilemma is a problem and says: "well a problem.. I don't know, it is a problem that you don't know what to do,with whom to go and things like that .. I think, well, you canwrite down 'problem'".

06 Using one's own experience. This code was assigned toparts in which a comparison was made between the situationdescribed in the context and a situation known from one's ownexperience. This is an example for dilemma: "That happens to metoo, sometimes. I want to go and sleep over with my friend, andthat very evening at home there are pancakes for dinner!"

07 Elaborating the contextual information withoutdecontextualization. This code was assigned to protocol parts inwhich links were made within the context itself, between differentparts of it, without abstracting from the context in any way. Anelaboration utterance for dilemma is: "I think that it, say it isvery difficult what she has to do. You have to make a decisionyes dilemma .. you think you want to go on a holiday, but stillyou want very much to go to your sister's wedding day .. but onthe one hand you think: my sister's wedding day is only one day,


say, and then on the other hand a holiday is a whole week, so youwould miss a week's holidays".

08

Decontextualization. A protocol part was coded 08 when itgave evidence of abstraction from the context in any way, as inthe following protocol part: ".. I think when you have two thingsat the same time, that then you .. that then it is called a dilemmaor something ..". This student has abstracted from the specificalternatives mentioned in the context to: 'two things at the sametime'. Decontextualization is also evident here in the change fromthe 'I' in the context to the more general 'you' in what the studentsays.

09

Using meta-knowledge. A protocol part was coded 09when it gave evidence of knowledge relevant to the process offinding the target word's meaning. An example for 'personalia' is:"I do get what they mean, but I don't know how to explain, your.. a collective word for .. for .. where you are bom, your firstname, your family name and things like that".

10

Producing a superordinate category. Code 10 was assignedwhen a superordinate was mentioned as a candidate for the targetword's meaning. An example is given by the student who infersthat a receipt is 'a kind of proof that you have returned thevideotape', in which 'a kind of proof' is a clear.indication of asuperordinate.

11

Producing a specification of the superordinate. Code 11was assigned when a specification of the target word's meaningwas mentioned, that could be attached to the superordinate. In thepiece of protocol quoted above for code 10, 'that you havereturned the videotape' is coded as a specification; the studentpreserves this specification in a more general form in the resultingword meaning as 'that you have returned it'.

12

Producing a synonym. Code 12 was assigned when asynonym was mentioned as a candidate for the target word'smeaning, as done by this student for dilemma: . "well .. a bit of achoice, a 'two-choice' or something ..".

13

Producing a circumscription of the word meaning in a non-conventional form. Code 13 was assigned to protocol parts inwhich the meaning of the target word was described in a formdifferent from synonyms, superordinates and specifications. Anexample is the circumscription 'that you don't very well knowwhat to do' for dilemma.

14

Rereading the context or part of it. The fourtéenth element,rereading, was added during the try-out of the coding manual, asthis activity (one which had not been part of the training program)proved to occur quite often. Only pure rereading activities werecoded as 'rereading', apart from other activities (like substitutionor checking activities) that involved rereading with a specialpurpose.


To distinguish between producing a synonym (12) and producing asuperordinate category (10) it was decided to code one-word suggestionswithout specifications as a synonym, unless there was a clear indicationthat the student wanted to specify this one word but did not know how todo it. For instance, for 'dilemma', one of the students states that it is akind of problem, but he can't really say what kind; this case is coded asthe production of a superordinate category. But when a student says that'dilemma is a problem', this is coded as the production of a synonym,although strictly speaking this student might mean 'a problem' as asuperordinate rather than a synonym.

All protocols were coded by one judge, and two to three items persubject (in total a quarter of all protocols) were coded independently by asecond judge. Percentage agreement between the judges ranged from .80to 1.00 for the different coding categories, with a mean percentage ofagreement across categories of .94. The codes given by judge 1 are thedata which are analysed in the following.

Apart from the process codes, we evaluated the word meaningsproduced by the students at the end of the think-aloud process (round 1).The results concerning these definitions are presented after those for theprocess codes.

Protocol differences between trained and control students

We compared the frequency and quality of the process codes andfour aspects of the resulting definitions of the trained and controlstudents. In Table 3 and 4 the results are given for the process codes.Table 5 and 6 show the results for the definition aspects.

Analysis of the process codes

Frequency of occurrence of the process codesIn Table 3 results are given regarding the frequency of the process

elements coded for the trained and control students.

[Table 3 here]

The codes given were counted per code over items per student andcorrected for the items that were missing for the student concerned (theminimum score being 0, the maximum 10).

We expected the trained students to use the elements 01 to 09more often than the control students. The elements 01 to 05 have beenpart of the training program as given, and elements 06 and 07 arepossible consequences of the Wh-questions as used in the progam.Occurrences of element 08 and 09 are possible consequences of thetraining program as a whole, as the need to decontextualize and to thinkabout what it takes to find a word's meaning have been the subject oftraining throughout. As for elements 10 to 13 we expected the trained


students to suggest superordinates and specifications more often thansynonyms in comparison with the control students. Moreover, weexpected them to give fewer circumscriptions in a non-conventional form.This expectation was based on the presentation of the definition format inthe training program, that was meant to do two things: remind thestudents of the possibility of giving the meaning of the target word with asynonym; and making them familiar with the possibility of giving it inthe form of a definition (superordinate and specification).

In sum: we predicted that the trained students would show a morefrequent use of elements 01 to 11 than the control students, so thesedifferences were tested one-tailed. As we expected the trained students touse the elements 12 and 13 less often than the controls, these differenceswere also tested one-tailed, in the opposite direction. For rereading (14),added during the try-out of the coding manual, we had no prediction sothis element was tested two-tailed.

In view of the small sample sizes the differences between thegroups were tested by the non-parametric Kolmogorov-Smirnov test,which compares the frequency distributions of two samples (Siegel 8z.Castellan (1988). Dni n is the relevant test statistic. The critica' value ofmnD n, n with m=16 and n=16, at alpha= .05 is 112 in a one-tailed test and128 in a two-tailed test. Values exceeding the critica' value in Table 3 aremarked with an asterisk. Below, the results are considered in order ofprocess element.

Using a cloze sentence (01)The trained students use a cloze sentence in about one third of the

opportunities, which is significantly more often than their controls. Thismeans that the use of a cloze sentence does occur spontaneously withstudents of this age, but that the training program has succeeded inenhancing the use of this element.

Using a Wh-question (02)Explicitly stated Wh-questions are used with a mean of less than 1

occasion per 10 items by the trained group. Because of this low frequencythe difference with the control group is not significant. Stil!, it isinteresting to note that the control students did not once use a Wh-question explicitly. Asking such questions is probably not part of thespontaneous repertoire of students of this age. The implication of this isthat the trained students who use Wh-questions have learned to do soduring training.

Using the word form to get information about the word meaning (03)Even when taking into account that only 2 of the 10 items had a

word form that gave information about the word meaning ('personalia': aword derived from 'person', and 'hand- en spandiensten': a Dutchcompound word), word form is used very little. There is no differencebetween trained and control students in this respect.


Checking the word meaning in the cloze sentence (04) and in the wholefragment of text (05)

The trained students check significantly more often what they haveinferred from the context than do the control students. This applies toboth methods of checking discerned in the protocols: by substitution ofthe inferred meaning in the cloze sentence, and by considering the fit withthe fragment of text as a whole.

Using own experiences (06) and elaboration of the text (07)Using own experiences (06) and elaboration of the text (07) were

not explicitly trained, but both can be seen as the consequences ofimplicitly asking Wh-questions. The trained students use their ownexperiences significantly more often than does the control group.With regard to elaborations, the difference between the observedfrequencies in the two groups is in the predicted direction, but is notsignificant.

Decontextualization (08)All students, trained as well as control, show decontextualization

activities with almost all items. So all students demonstrate that theyperformed the task of inferring the meaning of the unknown word whilethinking aloud as a decontextualization task.

Using meta-knowledge (09)The frequency of use of meta-knowledge by the trained students is

very low, so the difference with the control group is not significant. Still,as is the case with the Wh-questions, it is interesting to note that thecontrol students do not once use meta-knowledge. It seems that usingsuch knowledge does not occur spontaneously with students of this age inthis type of task.

Producing a superordinate category (10), a specification of thesuperordinate category (11) and/Or a synonym (12)

We expected the trained students to use fewer synonyms (12) thanthe control students and more superordinates (10) and specifications (11),as the use of the last two elements could indicate the use of the definitionformat in finding the new word meaning. The differences between theobserved frequencies in the trained versus the control group forsuperordinates, specifications and synonyms are in the opposite directionto that predicted. However, none of these differences is significant. Weshail return to this point in the next section.

Producing a circumscription in a non-conventional foren (13)We expected the trained students to use fewer circumscriptions

(13) than the control students, in favor of the use of more superordinatesand specifications. The difference between the observed frequencies in thetwo groups for circumscriptions is in the predicted direction, but is notsignificant.


Rereading the context or part of it (14)As stated above, the coding of pure rereading activities was added

during the try-out of the coding manual, as this process element proved tooccur quite often. The difference between the two groups was thereforetested two-tailed. Pure rereading turned out to occur significantly moreoften in the trained group.

In sum, we have found a significant difference between the trainedand control students in the direction predicted, concerning the frequencyof foor elements:1. the use of a cloze sentence2. checking of what is inferred from the context in a cloze sentence3. checking of what is inferred in the text as a whole, and4. the use of their own experiences.At least some of the trained students also turned out to use Wh-questionsand metacognitive knowledge, whereas none of the control students did.Although the use of metacognitive knowledge is not very frequent (lessthan once per 10 items) in the trained group, this may still be animportant result. We illustrate this by the way the student in the followingprotocol part deals with 'dilemma'. He says: "(...) it is a real dilemma,yes, a bit of a rotten situation I think, yes, but I don't know if it is álwaysso that you have to choose between two things, that I don't know (..) it isa real choosing problem a bit, you have to choose between two things,well: problem with choosing". This student is, as it were, negotiating withhimself about the status of 'between two things', and as a result decidesto leave it out of the word meaning for now. He thereby demonstratesthat he knows that infoimation about the meaning of a word from onecontext has to be confirrned in others. If he encounters the word'dilemma' again in the context of having to choose between two things,he may remember his earlier weighing-process and then add the aspect'between two things' to the meaning of 'dilemma' in his semanticmemory.

Finally, the trained students turned out to reread the context (orpart of it) significantly more often than the control students did, althoughrereading was not taught as such in the training program. For no elementwas a significant difference found in the direction opposite to thatpredicted.

Quality of the process codesTable 4 gives the results on the quality of the process elements

codedo

[Table 4 here]

Each process element, as it occurs in the protocols, was given a score of0 (if it was used wrongly), 1 (if it was used half-correctly) or 2 (if it wascorrectly used). For each student the quality score per element wasdetermined by taking the sum of the quality scores obtained and


extrapolating this from the number of items that the student concernedhad completed to the total number of 10 items (the minimum score being0, the maximum score 20). For each element, the number of students forwhich the element was found in the protocols varies; in Table 4 thisnumber is therefore given per process code. Again, Dm , is theKolmogorov-Smirnov test statistic used. The critical value of mnD ri,varies with m and n. We expected the trained students to use all elementswith more quality than the control students, so we tested all differences inthe predicted direction (one-tailed) at alpha= .05.

For none of the training elements were the differences in qualitybetween trained and control students significant. But the difference inquality of elaboration (84, for which alpha= .10) indicates a trend for thetrained students to make better elaborations than their controls. As wasstated above, an utterance by the students was coded as an elaborationwhen a part of the context was reformulated in a context-bound way, andwithout the use of the students' own experiences. Elaborations can beseen as the consequence of implicitly asking Wh-questions (like 'whodoes this?', 'what does he do?') and are very useful as a bottom-upactivity to start the decontextualization process.

Conclusions concerning the process codesWe conclude that the trained students have gathered a number of

process supports from the training program that might help them to inferthe meaning of an unknown word. These are the use of a cloze sentence,the use of their own experiences, checking activities and rereading. Someof the trained students have also come to use Wh-questions to search thecontext for information' and some of them use meta-knowledge aboutword meanings. We shall look now at these supports in turn.

A cloze sentence 'can help to start up the inference process, bysteering into the direction of a suitable word meaning, that can serve as amodel for the target word meaning. Later in the process such a sentencecan be used to check whether the inferred word meaning fits. In the nextsection we will see that checking in this way has its limitations, and thatchecking more globally by considering an entire segment of text may bethe preferable way. That trained students check more often is animportant result in itself, as checking is notoriously difficult to train (cf.Veenman, in press).

Students' use of their own experiences can support the inferenceprocess by triggering ideas about what the unknown word may mean. Wethink this use is a consequence of explicitly or implicitly asking Wh-questions such as: 'What is the matter in this text?', 'What do I knowabout this kind of situation?' and the like.

Rereading the context as such was not an element of the trainingprogram. Nevertheless the fact that the trained students reread more oftencan be interpreted as a more global consequence of the program, as thestrategy trained continually stressed the context as a source of informationabout the meaning of the unknown word. Clearly, rereading is a goodpreparation for other steps in the inference process. (It is relevant to note


here that a recent instructional intervention to influence the process ofderiving word meaning from context by Goerss, Beek & McKeown (inpreparation) includes rereading of the context as a separate component.)As for the quality of the process codes, no significant difference emergesbetween the two groups. However, there is a trend for the trained studentsto make better elaborations, which is possibly a result of the higherfrequency of rereading.

That some of the trained students have come to use meta-knowledge is a promising finding, because knowledge about what it takesto find the meaning of an unknown word can stimulate inferenceactivities and thereby future performance.

Finally, it is important to note that there is no evidence from theprotocols that the trained students unlearned the relevant process elementsthat the control students spontaneously use.

Analysis of the definitions as the products of the think-aloud process

In addition to the process codes, we analyzed the word meaningsas stated by the trained and control students at the end of the think-aloudprocess. The instruction for the students had been to give the meaning ofthe target word "as it might be found in a dictionary". In the following,we refer to the answers of the students by the term 'definitions',However, the reader should keep in mind that these definitions can havedifferent formats, including a one-word format in the case of a synonym.In fact, the definitions were scored on four aspects: quality,decontextualizedness, part of speech and format.

QualityQuality was considered in terms of 'communicative adequacy',

regardless of the format in which the definition was stated. So whatmattered was the content of the information conveyed. The format of thedefinitiOn was coded separately (see below). Quality was judged on ascale from zero (inadequate) to 6 (fully adequate). The maximum scoreper student is 60. Quality was evaluated by two independent judges.Differences in the scores given were solved by discussion.

DecontextualizednessDecontextualizedness, that is the degree to which the definition is

abstracted from the context, was judged on a scale from zero (verycontext-bound) to 4 (highly context-free). The maximum score per studentis 40. This aspect was also judged by two independent judges, anddifferences in the scores given were solved by discussion.

Part of speechCoded here depended on whether the part of speech of the

definition as stated (noun or verb) was the same as or different from thatof the target word. Per item a score of 1 (same) or 0 (different) wasgiven, so the maximum score per student is 10. Part of speech could be


coded objectively.

FormatThe definition as stated could have different forms: the form of

one word; of one word plus (one or more) specifications; or a formdifferent from these. The format of the definitions could be codedobjectively in these three categories. (Note that the three formats aremutually exclusive, because the students had to state the definition of theword they had arrived at after thinking aloud.)

Results concerning the four definition aspectsResults concerning the definition aspects are presented in Table 5

and 6. In Table 5 the results are given on quality, decontextualizednessand part of speech of the definitions produced by the trained and controlstudents.

[Table 5 here]

The differences between the two groups are tested non-parametrically.D„,„ is the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test statistic used. The critical value ofmnDmn at alpha= .05 in a one-tailed test is 112 with m=16 and n=16. Fornone of the comparisons made is the difference significant.

The quality scores indicate that the experimental task was adifficult one for all students, the mean score being 29.03 and 25.81 forthe trained and control group respectively, which is less than half of themaximum possible score of 60.

Table 6 shows the data on the format variable.

[Table 6 here]

In Table 6 the frequency of occurrence of the definition formats is given.The difference between the distributions of numbers over the threeformats is tested by the Chi-Square statistic. For the comparison betweentrained and control students the value of Chi-Square is 7.35, for which p<.06 (DF=3). So in comparison to their controls, trained students tend togive more one-word definitions and fewer definitions in the form of one-word-plus-specifications.

A one-word answer can be meant by the student concerned as asynonym or as a superordinate that has to be specified later. Throughoutthe training program the use of a synonym was presented as one of twoways of stating the meaning of the unknown word, the alternative beingthe formulation of a definition in the form of a superordinate categorywith one or more specifications. It was also made clear that often noexact synonym exists for an unknown word. We expected the trainingprogram to teach the students not only to look for the meaning of the newword in the form of a synonym, but also in the form of a definition. Sothe trend in the results is contrary to what we expected.


To gain more insight into this format difference between trainedand control students, we have looked at the format of the definitionsgiven at the L1 SIWMC-test version A, taken before the training, and atthe same test version B, taken about ten days after the eight L I lessons.The results are given in Tables 7.1 and 7.2.

[Tables 7.1 and 7,2 here]

A salient fact revealed by Table 7.1 and 7.2 is that the majority of theanswers is in the foren of one word, for control as well as trainedstudents, both before and after training. The observed frequency of one-word answers given by the trained group is slightly lower than that forthe control group before training, and somewhat higher after training, butthe values of Chi-Square (.45 for which p< .80 and 3.88 for which p< .14respectively) indicate that the differences are not significant.

If we compare the figuren in Tables 7.1 and 7.2 with those inTable 6 we can conclude that the paper-and-pentil tests elicited mainlyone-word answers (91% in both groups before training, after training 93%in the trained group and 89% in the control group). The think-aloudsituation clearly elicited more diversity in format of definition for bothgroups (one-word answers making up 41% for the trained students and30% for the controls).

The trained students' relative preference for one-word answersmay have been related to the use of a cloze sentence. We explored thispossibility by inspecting cross tables with raw frequenties of use of acloze sentence and of one-word definitions for the 16 trained and 16control students, with 10 items. Within the control group 6 'out of 14incidents of cloze sentence use (43%) go together with a one-wordformulation, and this figure is 27 out of 46 (or 59%) within the trainedgroup. In both groups, then, there is a relation between the use of a clozesentence and the use of one-word definitions.

This observation brings us to a problem inherent in the process ofinferring word meanings from context. In using the sentence with thetarget word as a cloze sentence, a student can get off to a good start. Forone thing the position of the unknown word in the cloze sentence givesinformation about the part of speech; further, it can give the student agood idea about a word meaning that could be helpful as a model for themeaning of the unknown word. When a one-word solution is found, it iseasy to check this solution in the sentence. If this fits syntactically andsemantically, the inference process is satisfactorily finished. A problemarises when no one-word solution exists, as is the case for words thatrefer to complex concepts. In this case the cloze sentence can still behelpful in generating a model word meaning, but when it is clear (forinstante because of information in the sentences surrounding the clozesentence) that this model needs specification, it then becomes moredifficult to check this more-word meaning in the sentence. It is easier tocheck whether 'problem' fits the cloze sentence for dilemma than it is tocheck 'problem of choice between two things, both of which you want to


do'. Some students solve this difficulty by looking for a compound wordin which superordinate and specification are merged. An example is givenby the student who tried to integrate two separate aspects inferred for'receipt', that it is a proof and that it is a voucher, into 'proof-voucher'('bewijsbon' in Dutch). All the same, it is not impossible to use a clozesentence to check a rather complex word meaning, as is illustrated by theexample for the target word 'receipt' that we gave earlier in this paper toillustrate the process code 04, and that we repeat here: "yes, that fits in it,I think, 'In most video hire shops you can ask for a proof that you havereturned it properly if you are returning a videotape' .. yes, so that fits".

For a training program in inferring word meanings from context,the reasoning above implicates that the cloze sentence should bepresented to the students as a stepping stone: helpful in getting startedwith the inference process, but not to be used too rigidly in the checkingphase.

Summary of the differences between trained and control students

Here we summarize the results mentioned above in terms of thetheoretical basis of the training program. As was described earlier in thispaper, the program was meant to teach the students to use a number oftext-driven, schema-driven and self-regulatory process elements. We shallnow discuss these in turn.

As for the text-driven elements we saw that the trained studentslearned to use the cloze sentence, both to get the inference process startedand to check the result. At least some of them have also learned to askWh-questions with respect to the unknown word, a phenornenon that isaltogether absent in the control group. Wh-questions, although notspontaneously used at all, may be a useful instrument in inferenceprocesses, and worth teaching to students of this age, because thesequestions can result in linking operations within the context as well asbetween context and stored knowledge. The implicit use of Wh-questionsmay underly trained students' more frequent use of their own experiences.This implicit use may also have resulted in the better quality of theelaborations made, that is, in the better quality of the connectionsexplored within the context itself.

Word form, an element that could be called word-driven ratherthan text-driven, was used so linie that we cannot interpret the findingspertaining to it. The 'Zoom-tactic' that was meant to make students lookat word form was the third tactic presented during training, and it wasprobably not given enough attention. It is also possible that the tactic didnot appeal to students because with many unknown words it does notyield much information. However, it is probably worth teaching the skiliof using word form in its own right, as the research by Anglin (1993)indicates. Anglin's empirical results show that children add a certainamount of words to their vocabularies every day by learning words assuch, but also a second amount by applying morphological analysis andcomposition to potentially knowable words. This second amount becomes


more important with age during the elementary school years.As for the schema-driven elements, we must look at the

consequences of the Definition Schema, as presented in the trainingprogram. This schema was intended to teach the students two ways ofstating the meaning of the target word: one being a synonym, and theother a definition composed of a superordinate category withspecifications. As we have seen, during the inference process the trainedstudents did not use more superordinates or specifications than did thecontrols. We have the impression that they preferred to use synonyms,because they found the definition form too complicated. But the findingthat at least some of the trained students use meta-knowledge during theinference process, that is, knowledge about what it takes to find themeaning of an unknown word, may be a more genera' result of thepractice that these students had with the definition format.

The aim of the use of text- and schema-driven elements was tostimulate the decontextualization process. No differences were foundbetween the two groups of students in this respect. On the one hand, thetask of inferring the meaning of the unknown word while thinking aloudhas probably stimulated all students, both trained and control, todecontextualize to some degree. On the other hand, the trained student§practiced decontextualization during training in the form of dialogues,while during the think-aloud task no dialogue with the experimenter wasallowed. Probably the students had too little practice during training tointernalize the decontextualization activities and have the dialogue, as itwere, within themselves.

A last ingredient of the training program was formed by its self-regulatory elements. These were meant to make the students aware of thecontext as a valuable source of information about the unknown word, tomake them aware of the status of the information inferred, and of theneed to check this information. That the training program succeeded inheightening this awareness or bringing it about is indicated by the higherfrequency of rereading and checking operations by the trained students.An example of this awareness is given by the student who, asked aboutwhat she thought she had learned from the training program, answered:"(I learned that) if I don't know a word, what I have to do, that I don'thave to look in a dictionary right away, but that I simply .. can see, firstread on, and then see if I can find it out for myself". This result is notunimportant in view of the many opportunities that will arise for thisstudent to learn something in this way. (See also Nist & Olejnik, 1995, p.188, who mention the fact that even college students don't seem to spendmuch time looking into context where this would be a sensible thing todo.)

The higher frequency with which trained students used the processelements mentioned above does not have significant consequences for thequality of these activities (except for the quality of elaborations). Thesame goes for the quality of the new word's definition as formulated atthe end of the think-aloud process. If the training program had consistedof more practice, with a larger variety of items, the frequency of the


operations performed might have resulted in a better quality of theseoperations and consequently in more adequate definitions. As to theformat of the definitions, we found that the trained students showed apreferente for one-word definitions over more complex ones, while forthe control students a reverse trend is visible. As we have shown above,this phenomenon is probably related to the use of cloze sentences.

General conclusions and discussionOn the basis of the protocol analyses we conciude that the strategy

as trained has had effect on the frequency of a number of inferenceactivities executed by the trained students. This effect is promising inview of the future performance of these students. If they actually go on toperform some of these activities on encountering unknown words, thismeans that an inference process has started and may be maintained longenough to yield information about the word meaning that can beelaborated further at every subsequent confrontation with the same word.

Hardly any effect was achieved with regard to the quality of theactivities performed by the trained students, nor on the quality of theresulting definitions. This last finding is in accordance with the fact thatno significant effect of the training program was found on the paper-and-pencil tests administered prior to the think-aloud sessions.

To sum up, the trained students performed more relevant inferenceactivities but the quality of these activities left room for improvement.Our endeavor to teach students to deal with the task of inferring wordmeanings from context in its full complexity, by training them to use theWord Learning Strategy as a whole, would probably ask for more thanthe limited number of lessons that we had available. The protocolanalyses provide more insight into the specific difficulties the studentswere confronted with during training. In the following sections we look atthe strategy as trained in relation to the task difficulties; the Jatter arediscussed first.

The inherent difficulties of inferring word meaning from contextThe inherent difficulties of inferring word meaning from context

once again become clear from the think-aloud protocols of theexperimental task. Let us look more closely at these difficulties, whichearlier in this paper were compared to those of a bootstrapping process.

The instruction given to the students was to infer, as well as theycould, the meaning of the target word from the context given, and toarrive at the word meaning "as it might be found in a dictionary". Thisinstruction aims at a decontextualization process, starting from the contextand working towards an end product in the form of either a suitablesynonym or a (more or less) formal definition. In order to succeed at thistask the students must come to understand the context by makingconnections within the text itself (what we have called 'elaborations') andby making connections between the text and information already known(for instante by looking for an analogous situation from their ownexperience). By doing this the students must decontextualize the


information that is related to the unknown word from the text and state itin the form of a more or less conventional definition. In the protocols wesaw that both one-word solutions and definitions have their owndifficulties. As the target words refer to complex concepts, no simplewell-known synonyms exist for these words. Looking for a suitablesynonym therefore means trying to construct a compound word thatcovers different aspects of the word meaning as inferred from the context.1f such a compound word cannot be found or constructed, the student canopt to settle for a 'synonym' that captures only part of the target word'smeaning, often an overly general term that would be more suitable as asuperordi nate.

A formal definition may be even more difficult to draw up, as thisentails finding a suitable superordinate as well as specification.Superordinates for complex concepts tend to be abstract ('mark' for'stigma', 'data' for 'personalia'). Without a superordinate it is allodifficult to find a specification, unless the student uses an 'empty'superordinate such as 'something'. Students who are not aware of thedifficulties of finding a synonym or a definition, or who try to circumventthem, tend to give circumscriptions of the target word's meaning in adifferent form such as: 'dilemma means that you don't know what tochoose'. Although these circumscriptions can be fairly adequate from ashort-term communicative point of view, they often cover only part of thetarget word's meaning, and in a form that is not fully decontextualized.This form may not lend itself very well to integrating the new wordmeaning into the structure of the semantic network in due time, nor tofuture formal operations to be executed on parts of the word meaning,such as differentiating dilemmas from other kinds of problems (see VanDaalen-Kapteijns & Elshout-Mohr, 1981).

The Word Learning Strategy as it was trainedIn the training program the two main means for the.

decontextualization process were presented consecutively in the 'Track-tactic'. The students were taught to follow up the text-driven help first(cloze sentence and Wh-questions) and then the schenia-driven help(filling out the definition schema with either a synonym, or a general andspecific characteristic). The results indicate that the students learned touse the text-driven elements more than the schema-driven elements. Thefact that the students found the Jatter more difficult to use may havecontributed to this outcome.

Looking at the strategy now, we think that it was too complex tobe taught in a limited number of lessons. It might have been wiser topresent the students with one help method at a time, either the text-drivenhelp to work from the text upwards, or the schema-driven help toapproach the context with the definition schema as a search plan. Thisthought is in line with the finding by Hattie, Biggs & Purdie (1996, p.129), who carried out a meta-analysis on the effects of learning skilisinterventions. They found that single-component interventions, aiming atnear transfer of a specific task-related skill, are more effective than


multiple-component interventions. On the other hand, as was mentionedin the introduction to this paper, a limited training program reduces thegeneralizability of the effects attained beforehand, and leaves the task ofintegrating the components still to be done.

Below we sketch three outlines for simpler and perhaps moresuccessful training procedures. In order to compensate for the potentiallylimited effects of each simple procedure as such, a more complex trainingprogram could consist of a combination of simple procedures.

Suggestions for more simple training procedures

A text-driven procedureA 'text-driven' training procedure would consist of a short series

of lessons presenting elements like: starting from the sentence in whichthe target word occurs and asking Wh-questions in order to understandthe context in relation to the target word. The lessons would have toinclude instruction in how to reformulate the information gathered into amore or less decontextualized form. Note that the use of questions is alsouseful for other verbal tanks, such as reading comprehension and forstudying text (see McKeown, Beck & Worthy, 1993; Overmaat, 1996, p.131-134).

A schema-driven procedureA 'schema-driven' procedure would consist of a short series of

lessons that would acquaint students with schema-driven elements. Firstthe students would practice with word meanings very well known tothem, by formulating aspects of meaning in a conventional form whichfitted the definition format. This could be done by practicing with theDefinition Schema as used in the Word Learning Strategy or bypracticing with the Word Map (see Schwartz & Raphael, 1985). Theywould then learn to use this format as a couple of empty slots to be filledby searching the context for the required information. Students would alsopractice the use of the schema as a means for encoding and rememberingselected information about the meaning of a word in 'a simple,verbalizable form. The schema could then function as an aide to formingand retaining the word meaning as a stable unit, a unit that is suitable asa constituent in a semantic memory structure.

A model-driven procedureStill another training procedure is feasible. This would start from

the Tinding that most students seem to prefer the simplest case: that oftrying to find a synonym, or at least a one-word solution that more or lesscaptures the meaning of the unknown word. Put differently, this serieswould start from the 'primitive routines that get the job done' (Garner,1990, p. 519).

The strategy to be taught to the students would have this for step1: look for one word that you think has a meaning close to that of theunknown word and use this as a model word (see Van Daalen-Kapteijns


& Elshout-Mohr, 1981). Step 2 would be: see if you can add somethingto this model word, to make the meaning more precise. In the lessonsconcerned something would have to be said about the phenomenon thatnot many words have exact synonyms, and that in most cases a differentword has a different or at least partially different meaning. Step 3 wouldconsist of checking operations. First, the model word plus addition wouldhave to be checked in the context from which it was inferred. (In view ofwhat was said above about the limitations of a cloze sentence, this checkwould have to be done in the entire segment of text rather than in thesentence in which the target occurs.) Ideally, the plausibility of the wordmeaning would also have to be evaluated in the light of the broadersemantic field. A study by Nagy Scott (1990) showed that studentsfrom different grade levels (7th and 10th graders and undergraduates) doindeed apply word schemas in evaluating hypotheses about possiblemeanings for unknown words.

This strategy, starting from a model word, differs from what wehave tried to do in the training program as it was given. The programoffered the students the definition format as an empty model to be filledfrom the context, but students might find it easier to start with an alreadyfilled model that they then adapt with help from the context.

The training procedures, the core of which is sketched above,would have to be enriched by elements of meta-knowledge, i.e.knowledge about what it takes to arrive at a more or lessdecontextualized, conventional word meaning, and by elements of self-regulation, i.e. awareness of the need to use the context and check theinformation inferred.

In our view, each of these procedures is an interesting candidatefor future research. If one or more of these should prove to be successful,these are better candidates for use in the classroom than a more complexprogram. Note again that the three procedures, embedding different strate-gies, would not have to exclude one another. It is conceivable that theyare all part of a wider curriculum in which teaching students to becomestrategie in the development of their vocabulary has an important place.The different strategies can be offered to students as alternative ratherthan complementary strategies to help decontextualize information.Moreover, students would have to learn when the use of which strategywas most likely to be successful. In a curriculum as proposed here, thenotion of the 'brake-tactic' (to stop and pay attention to an unknownword) and the 'zoom-tactic' (to pay attention to the word itself) wouldalso have to be incorporated.


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35 word learning strwegy

Appendix A The contexts used for the 10 target words in thethink-aloud sequel (translated from Dutch)

Item 1 articuleren')You have to articulate better. If you mutter like that nobody understandsyou. And speaking louder doesn't help, if you still swallow half yourwords.

Item 2 ('reçu')In most video hire shops you can ask for a receipt if you are returning avideotape. That is useful, as sometimes a videotape gets lost. And if theythink that you have lost it, then at least you can prove that you hadreturned the tape properly.

Item 3 ('dilemma')I don't know exactly what to do. My friend and her parents have askedme to go with them for the holidays. But my sister is getting married atthe same time. If I join my friend, I will miss the wedding. And if I stayat home for the wedding, I can't go on holiday. It is a real dilemma!

Item 4 ('stigma')Long ago this man robbed a bank. Since then he has the stigma of beinga criminal. He has suffered his punishment, and has never stolen anythingagain. But still people point him out as a bank robber.

Item 5 ('insinueren')What are you insinuating? Why don't you say just what you mean? Ifyou really think he bas stolen something, you'd better say so openly.Then at least he can defend himself. Just spreading vague stores isn't fairto him.

Item 6 'traditie')In our family we have a nice tradition. Every child that is bom comesinto the 'family cradle', the cradle in which grandma herself slept as ababy. My mother has been in that 'family cradle', and me too. And mycousins. But when there are two babies at the same time, then we have aproblem!

Item 7 ('personalia')When you apply for a passport, of course they have to know yourpersonalia. The man or woman who helps you asks when you were bom,what your first name and family name is, where you live, and so on. Thatis all fed into the computer.

Item 8 ('hand- en spandiensten')When we have a party we can count on John to do a number of odd jobs.He is always willing to help out, and he never refuses to roll up hissleeves, if needed.


Item 9 ('faciliteiten')This sports hall has all facilities: baskets, balts and nets, but also tribunes.toilets and a canteen. So you can easily spend a whole day in there.

Item 10 ('veto')Many people in the United States want taxes to be raised. But thepresident does not want that at all. If a proposal to raise taxes is accepted,he will put in his veto. So for the time being taxes will remain the same.

general characteristic: specific characteristic:

The unknown word:

Definition:

37

Figure 1. Definition Schema

Figure 20 Cloze sentence, possible Wh-questions and answers for 'anecdote'

Cloze sentence: "This is the that my father likes best"

possible Wh-questions possible answers

What is it that my father likes best?

Why does he like that best?What is it about?

That story about my grand-fatherIt makes us laughAbout my grandfather fallingthrough the ice

Figure 3. The definition schema for 'anecdote'

The unknown word: 'anecdote' (no synonym)

general characteristic: specific characteristic:

a story it is funny

definition: 'a story that is funny'

38

Table 1 Time of administration, Means and Standard Deviations for all measures forthe Experimental (E) and Control (C) group

coeffi-dientalpha Time E (n=32) C (n=32)

M SD M SD

Ll Vocabulary .88 ml 38.94 9.43 37.44 9.49

EFL Vocabulary .97 ml 22.02 13.15 23.90 15.06

L1 SIWMC (A) .71 ml 6.83 2.93 7.23 3.18

Ll SIWMC (B) .78 m2 8.52 3.58 8.24 3.94

EFL SIWMC (A) .88 ml 3.29 3.27 3.68 3.36

EFL SIWMC (B) .82 m2 2.34 2.71 1.98 2.41

EFL S1WMC (C) .89 m3 3.83 3.36 3.95 3.23

Ll Reading Compre-hension

.68 m2 14.52 3.73 13.93 3.52

EFL Reading Com-prehension

.72 m3 10.98 3.60 10.85 4.12

39

Table 2a Analyses of Covariance of the scores on LI SIWMC (B) with covariates LlSIWMC (A) and Ll Vocabulary

Source of Variation SS DF MS F Significanceof F

Treatment 1.365 1 1.365 .150 .700

School 41.953 3 13.984 1.533 .217

2-way interaction 7.948 3 2.649 .290 .832Treatment x School

Table 2b Analysis of Covariance of the scores on EFL SIWMC (B), with covariatesEFL SIWMC (A) and EFL Vocabulary


Treatment 7.137 1 7.137 2.449 .124

School 38.130 3 12.710 4.362 .008

2-way interaction 2.374 3 .791 .272 .846Treatment x School

Table 2c Analysis of Covariance of the scores on EFL SIWMC (C) with covariatesEFL SIWMC (B), EFL SIWMC (A) and EFL Vocabulary


Treatment .134 1 .134 .039 .845

School 11.679 3 3.893 1.123 .350


40

Table 2d Analysis of Covariance of the scores on L1 Reading Comprehension withcovariates L1 SIWMC (A) and L 1 Vocabulary


Treatment .744 1 .744 .120 .731

School 28.423 3 9.474 1.524 .220

2-way interaction 20.406 3 6.802 1.094 .360Treatment x School

Table 2e Analysis of Covariance of the scores on EFL Reading Comprehension withcovariates EFL SIWMC (B), EFL SIWMC (A) and EFL Vocabulary


Treatment 3.156 1 3.156 .532 .470

School 43.324 3 14.441 2.433 .077


41

Table 3

Mean frequeney (and standard deviation) of use of the processcodes with ten items by the control group (C) (m=16) and theexperimental group (E) (n=16)

DmnCm=16

En.16

01 cloze sentence 1.03 (1.44) 3.51 (2.85) .438*

02 Wh-question .00 ( .00) .81 (1.59) .250

03 word form .29 ( .65) .24 ( .51) .000

04 checking in sentence .45 ( .76) 1.66 (1.59) .500*

05 checking in text .59 (1.07) 1.99 (1.61) .500*

06 own experiences .26 ( .76) 1.33 (1.66) .438*

07 elaboration 2.59 (1.91) 2.78 (2.23) .188

08 decontextualization 9.23 ( .90) 9.45 ( .85) .188

09 metacognition .00 ( .00) .63 ( .92) .375

10 superordinate 4.44 (2.50) 4.09 (1.36) .125

11 specification 3.83 (2.10) 3.65 (1.44) .188

12 synonym 3.40 (2.31) 4.00 (101) .063

13 circumscription 5.04 (2.35) 3.77 (2.65) .250

14 rereading .73 (1.54) 2.45 (1.69) .688*

42

Table 4 Means (and standard deviations) of quality of the process codesused with ten items by the control group (C) and the experimen-tal group (E).The critical value of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test statisticmnDmn varies with m and n. The value for which p< .10 ismarked with a plus sign.

C E Dr„,„

M m M n

01 cloze sentence 19.05 (1.63) 7 19.08 (2.01) 13 .132

02 Wh-question 0 19.38 (1.25) 4

03 word form 10.00 (10.00) 3 13.33 (11.55) 3 .333

04 checking in sentence 19.00 (2.24) 5 14.62 (7.76) 13 .385

05 checking in text 15.33 (6.50) 5 13.85 (6.18) 13 .215

06 own experiences 17.50 (3.54) 2 14.54 (6.91) 9 .444

07 elaboration 11.31 (4.38) 14 14.62 (4.52) 14 .429'

08 decontextualization 11.30 (2.59) 16 12.47 (2.24) 16 .250

09 metacognition 0 13.33 (5.16) 6

10 superordinate 14.33 (3.11) 14 15.11 (2.49) 16 .286

11 specification 11.07 (4.17) 14 10.15 (5.30) 16 A25

12 synonym 7.17 (3.37) 14 9.42 (4.00) 13 .346

13 circumscription 9.53 (3.24) 16 9.31 (1.92), 13 .236

format of word mea-•ning

one word

one word plus specifi-cations

other format

C E row total

40 (30%) 57 (41%) 97

50 (37%) 34 (25%) 84

44 (33%) 47 (34%) 91

43

Table 5

Quality, decontextualizedness, and part of speech of thedefinitions produced by the control group (C) (m=16) andthe experimental group (E) (n=16)

M

C E

quality 25.81 (7.05) 29.03 (5.21) .375

decontextualizedness 30.54 (5.74) 31.74 (5.82) .188

part of speech 7.04 (2.54) 6.66 (2.83) .188

Table 6

Number of times a definition is stated in the formatsdiscerned, by the control group (C) (m=16) and the experi-mental group (E) (n=16)

no'answer (item not (23) (16) (39)unknown)

column total 157 154 311

44

Table 7.1

Number of times a word meaning is stated in the formats discerned bytrained and control students with 25 paper-and-pentil items in the L 1Contextual Word Learning Test version A, taken before the training.Maximum column total per group is 400.

trained

control

row totalgroup groupn=16 n=16

287 (91%) 298 (91%) 585

15 ( 5%) 16 ( 5%) 31

15 ( 5%) 12 ( 4%) 27

317 326 643

format of wordmeaning in L1Contextual WordLearning Testversion A

one word

one word plusspecifications

other format

column total

Value Chi-Square .45 (DF=2) p< .80

Table 7.2

Number of times a word meaning is stated in the formats discerned bytrained and control students with 25 paper-and-pencil items in the LlContextual Word Learning Test version B, taken about ten days after theeight Ll lessons. Maximum column total per group is 400.

format Of word trained controlmeaning in L 1 group groupContextual Word,Learning Testversion B

row total

n=16 n=16

300 (93%) 274 (89%) 574

20 ( 6%) 26 ( 8%) 46

3 ( 1%) 8 ( 3%) 11

323 308 631

One word

one word plusspecifications

other format

column total

Value of Chi-Square is 3.88 (DF=2) (p< .14)

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