Lexical inferencing strategies used by learners of english as a foreign language: their relationship to depth of vocabulary knowledge and inferencing success

Abstract

The present study focuses on the cognitive process implemented by learners of English when they encounter unknown lexical items in the course of reading comprehension tasks. Lexical inferencing has been defined as ―the connections that people make when they try to interpret texts‖ (Brown and Yule 1983, Qian 2004). L2 lexical inferencing has been extensively studied by accounting for its different dimensions. Some studies have investigated into the students‘ use of knowledge sources, such as word and sentence knowledge within linguistic sources and world knowledge within non-linguistic sources (Haastrup 2008). Other studies have dealt with the inferential processes whereby students arrive at their conclusions for word meaning, and also with the degree of success of the lexical inferencing process (Haastrup 2008). In general terms, most research studies account for one or two of these dimensions (e.g. Haastrup 1991). In the present study, the following two dimensions are investigated into: learners‘ cognitive processes involved in lexical meaning interpretation, and the lexical inferencing success of their guesses. Thus, the main purpose of this research study is, firstly, to identify the lexical inferencing strategies used by 6 university students of English as a foreign language in the course of a reading comprehension task. These participants form two different proficiency level groups: three of them are intermediate EFL learners and the other three make up a group of advanced EFL learners. Secondly, the study intends to establish a relationship between the type of lexical inferencing strategies used and L2 learners‘ depth of vocabulary knowledge. Thirdly, it also attempts to relate L2 learners‘ use of lexical inferencing strategies and their success in lexical inferencing strategy use.