A weekly presentation was given to the English Department faculty members by (Asst. Prof. Dr. Zheen Hamad-Ameen Abdullah) on Monday, May 12, 2025 at English Department.
This study is conducted to explore how topic familiarity affects Kurdish EFL students’ ability to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words—known as lexical inference—while reading. The research found that when students already knew something about a topic, they were much better at understanding new vocabulary, especially after being taught cognitive strategies like predicting, asking questions, visualizing, summarizing, and answering comprehension questions. Fifty second-year English students participated, and their performance improved significantly from pre-test to post-test, with a strong positive correlation between topic familiarity and vocabulary gains. The study highlights the importance of linking new learning to students’ background knowledge and teaching them how to think actively while reading to support long-term language growth. The study concludes that topic familiarity and cognitive strategies significantly enhance Kurdish EFL students’ ability to infer word meanings and improve vocabulary comprehension.
