other words, some of them still had difficulties in applying contextual guessing in learning vocabulary.
b There were still students who could not accomplish the assignments
because they did not have sufficient vocabulary mastery, even the high- frequency words.
c Implementing contextual guessing strategy to find unknown words from
a complete reading passage was thought to be a quite difficult job for a number of students. They were able to perform contextual guessing
strategy from context well when the target words were presented in sentences or paragraphs specialized for practicing the strategy but not in
wider context e.g. one-page long short story. Either too many amount of unknown words in the reading passage or very limited clues to help the
guessing were recognized as the reasons.
d. Reflecting
Examining all the processes above, it was concluded that introducing and training students to employ contextual guessing strategy in learning new
vocabulary is useful and advantageous. By introducing and training students to employ contextual guessing strategy in learning vocabulary, it was expected that
they could learn vocabulary by themselves and they could be fostered to become autonomous learners. However, it was recognized that mastering contextual
guessing strategy in learning vocabulary needs long process with much practices. It is good that the students have started to use it from now.
Two types of homework employed in the second and third meetings were one of the ways in fostering the students to perform autonomous learning. In the
first homework, the students were delivered a copy of a reading passage titled “Pinocchio”. The instructions were reading the text, finding the target words or
the words they had not known, listing it in a piece of paper, and trying to guess the meanings from context. Meanwhile, the instructions of the second homework
were the same as the previous one, but in this time the texts were not provided by the teacher. They had to find a text by themselves and work on it.
B. Enhancing Students’ Autonomy in Learning Vocabulary
The students have experienced and have worked on finding unknown words’ meaning through the implementation of contextual guessing strategy in
learning vocabulary. Contextual guessing strategy was employed and implemented in order to enhance their learning autonomy. Thus, this section was
intended to investigate how the vocabulary learning strategy of contextual guessing enhanced their autonomy in learning vocabulary.
The strategy of contextual guessing enhanced the students’ autonomy in learning vocabulary by promoting the students’ use of metacognitive strategy.
Metacognitive strategy is one of the three categories of learning strategies proposed by O’Malley and Chamot 1990, cited in Benson, 2001. Metacognitive
strategy is simply described as the strategy about learning which includes planning, problem-solving, monitoring, and evaluating.
Citing Cotterall and Reinders 2004, cited in Ardi, 2007: 60 that metacognitive strategies promote learning autonomy, thus, promoting the
students’ use of metacognitive strategies in accomplishing the task will directly promote the students to be autonomous learners. The following discussion then
will elaborate how the students of grade XI-Social 1 class of Pangudi Luhur Sedayu Senior High School made use the metacognitive strategies to accomplish
the task given through the implementation of contextual guessing strategy. Therefore, this section was divided into four parts. Those were planning, problem-
solving, monitoring, and evaluating.
1. Planning
As it is proposed by O’Malley and Chamot 1990: 138, cited in Benson, 2001: 23, one of the functions of planning is to foster the students to draw
general but comprehensive image about “the concept or principle in an anticipated learning activity”. In this respect, it was recognized that by creating such planning
the students could have a clear image of what they would do to accomplish the task of learning.
In order to make the students be able to accomplish the task of learning new vocabulary through guessing from context and foster students to become
autonomous learners, two particular types of homework was given. In the first homework, the teacher delivered a copy of a short story titled “Pinocchio” to the
students. There were no questions to answer or list of unknown words provided in the handout. Rather, the teacher asked the students to read the text, select what
words they wanted to learn, and list them in a piece of paper. The target words were not selected by the teacher but the students selected what words they would
learn according to their own judgments. Soon after they have listed the words they wanted to explore, they were asked to implement contextual guessing strategy to
accomplish the task, finding the meaning of words they have selected. It was expected that every students had different list of words for every students had
different mastery of vocabulary. The second homework was slightly different with the first one. While the reading passage of the first homework was provided by the
teacher, in the second homework the students had to find by themselves the source of their learning as well as the words they would explore.
The students planned their task accomplishment soon after the instruction was given. According to the data gathered from the interview session, there were
two types of planning found. Those were time and source of learning. First, it was found that the students’ purpose of planning the time for
accomplishing the task was to make them be able to perform the task given well. A participant of the interview, Ms. White, articulated her awareness of the
importance of good time management to gain her best result by explaining her planning that she would accomplish the assignment on Thursday night because
usually there was no homework on that day. So, she would be able to concentrate on the accomplishment of assignment on contextual guessing better. Furthermore,
she added that if she did the assignment on Thursday, she would still have much time to check it, for the assignment was to be collected on Monday. From her
explanation, it was evident that Ms. White recognized well the relationship
