Investigating EFL Students' Attitudes towards Understanding Contextual Meaning of Written Discourse

Abstract

This study aimed at investigating ELT students' attitudes towards understanding contextual meaning of written discourse. The researcher has adopted descriptive analytical method in order to collect the necessary data which is relevant to the study. A questionnaire was designed namely to third year students of English at SUST-College of Languages. The sample of study comprised (30) students. The researcher applied SPSS program to analyze and verify the hypotheses. The results showed that extracting the information relevant to the meaning of a word from its linguistics environment enable students to comprehend the context. Moreover, inferring the meaning of the words within context can positively help students in delivering the message. Cultural beliefs and values negatively influence student’s comprehension of the written text. The study has recommended that linguistic contextual clues should be adequate for students to understand the meaning of all idioms. On the other hand, retaining the meaning of every word should encourage students to grasp the context. Mental picture of a text should help students to comprehend the process of contextual meaning. Some suggestions are also proposed for further studies.