The Role of Contextual Factors on Understanding the Intended Meaning of Written Discourse

Abstract

This study is about the role of contextual factors in understanding the intended meaning of written discourse. Therefore, whatis written should be understood to know why it is written? Through the experience of teaching English language, it is noticed that, the students face many problems to understand the meaning of any written text. Nodoubt their weak knowledge of the factors as cohesive devices, punctuation marks grammatical elements and spelling rules havenegative impact on comprehending the meaning. In this study the researcher adopted anexperimental analytical method using two tools: tests for the students and aquestionnaire for teachers ofEnglishlanguage. Thefindings showed that, those factors positively affect the meaning of written discourse. Based on those findings the researcher recommended that, the teachers of English language should providetheirstudents with extensive practice in using these factors and raise their awareness towards them. Theresearcher also suggested that, there is a need to explore the effect of cultural background of the students and many other factors such as morphological, semantic and rhetorical factors of other English language skills.