In a study conducted among marine engineering students and students studying
English at a University in Iran, it became apparent that students had two methods of
learning the meaning of English words in that contextual study. They learned
through determination strategies and social strategies illustrated in Table 2.
30 It
also became very clear that marine engineering students depended more on the
bilingual dictionary as part of the determination strategy for learning the meaning
of English words. It is submitted that it is probably due to the existence of Maritime
English that students in a maritime activity have to find more structured ways for
learning maritime language. Understanding this important investment in understanding maritime language is part of the key to successful maritime pedagogy. This point
should also encourage those in the area of research and development of languages as
they can use maritime language to adapt words into mother tongues from English to
make Maritime English more accessible to new cultures, if those cultures do not
have Maritime English yet however ultimately in the global context, communicating
in an understandable manner is part of natural maritime pedagogy.
Table 2 The percentage of using different strategies by EFL learners and Marine Engineering
(ME) students for discovering a new word’s meaning (Source: Research in English Language
Pedagogy, 2017)
Strategy
no.
Description
EFL learners
ME students
N Percentage N Percentage
Determination strategies
1
Analyze part of speech
30 48.75
30 58.67
2
Analyze affixes and roots
30 55.00
30 50.67
3
Check for L1 cognate
30 56.25
30 48.00
4
Analyze any available pictures or gestures
30 62.50
30 53.33
5
Guess from textual context
30 71.25
30 81.33
6
Bilingual dictionary
30 81.88
30 76.00
7
Monolingual dictionary
30 76.25
30 70.67
8
Word lists
30 37.50
30 34.67
9
Flash cards
30 30.63
30 30.67
Average
57.78
56.00
Social strategies
10
Ask teacher for an L1 translation
30 63.13
30 42.67
11
Ask teacher for paraphrase or synonym of
new word
30 63.13
30 50.67
12
Ask teacher for a sentence including the new
word
30 56.25
30 40.00
13
Ask classmates for meaning
30 61.25
30 64.00
14
Discover new meaning through group word
activity
30 36.88
30 45.33
Average
56.13
48.53
30 Heidar and Hemayati (2017).
616
F. P. Ndlovu
English at a University in Iran, it became apparent that students had two methods of
learning the meaning of English words in that contextual study. They learned
through determination strategies and social strategies illustrated in Table 2.
30 It
also became very clear that marine engineering students depended more on the
bilingual dictionary as part of the determination strategy for learning the meaning
of English words. It is submitted that it is probably due to the existence of Maritime
English that students in a maritime activity have to find more structured ways for
learning maritime language. Understanding this important investment in understanding maritime language is part of the key to successful maritime pedagogy. This point
should also encourage those in the area of research and development of languages as
they can use maritime language to adapt words into mother tongues from English to
make Maritime English more accessible to new cultures, if those cultures do not
have Maritime English yet however ultimately in the global context, communicating
in an understandable manner is part of natural maritime pedagogy.
Table 2 The percentage of using different strategies by EFL learners and Marine Engineering
(ME) students for discovering a new word’s meaning (Source: Research in English Language
Pedagogy, 2017)
Strategy
no.
Description
EFL learners
ME students
N Percentage N Percentage
Determination strategies
1
Analyze part of speech
30 48.75
30 58.67
2
Analyze affixes and roots
30 55.00
30 50.67
3
Check for L1 cognate
30 56.25
30 48.00
4
Analyze any available pictures or gestures
30 62.50
30 53.33
5
Guess from textual context
30 71.25
30 81.33
6
Bilingual dictionary
30 81.88
30 76.00
7
Monolingual dictionary
30 76.25
30 70.67
8
Word lists
30 37.50
30 34.67
9
Flash cards
30 30.63
30 30.67
Average
57.78
56.00
Social strategies
10
Ask teacher for an L1 translation
30 63.13
30 42.67
11
Ask teacher for paraphrase or synonym of
new word
30 63.13
30 50.67
12
Ask teacher for a sentence including the new
word
30 56.25
30 40.00
13
Ask classmates for meaning
30 61.25
30 64.00
14
Discover new meaning through group word
activity
30 36.88
30 45.33
Average
56.13
48.53
30 Heidar and Hemayati (2017).
616
F. P. Ndlovu