Strategies Employed by Mexican Secondary School Students When Facing Unfamiliar Academic Vocabulary
This article examines the strategies employed by Mexican secondary school students to understand unfamiliar academic vocabulary and the relationship between these strategies and their reading proficiency. Within the broader Latin American context—where low reading comprehension levels remain prevale...
Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
MDPI AG
2025-07-01
|
| Series: | Education Sciences |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/15/7/917 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | This article examines the strategies employed by Mexican secondary school students to understand unfamiliar academic vocabulary and the relationship between these strategies and their reading proficiency. Within the broader Latin American context—where low reading comprehension levels remain prevalent—the study focused on a sample of 40 first-year secondary students, categorized according to their reading level. Using two instruments, the research identified the vocabulary learning strategies used by students and assessed their effectiveness in deriving word meaning. Findings indicate that while students across reading levels use similar strategies, those with higher reading proficiency more frequently and effectively apply complex strategies such as contextual abstraction, retrieving textual information, rereading the text, and full morphological analysis. Morphological analysis proved to be the most effective strategy, provided students possessed the metalinguistic skills necessary to decompose and reconstruct word meaning from all morphemes. The study concludes that the successful use of vocabulary strategies is closely linked to students’ reading proficiency, and that reading comprehension and academic vocabulary knowledge are mutually reinforcing. These findings highlight the importance of explicitly teaching academic vocabulary in school settings as a means to enhance students’ reading performance. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 2227-7102 |