Cognitive Strategies Employed in Tackling Lexical Problems in Second Language Learning: A Psycholinguistic Study

Abstract

This study sheds light on the lexical choice difficulty encountered by advanced learners of English by analyzing the lexical choice errors committed by a group of Jordanian students majoring in English. A task was set for 40 students to translate from Arabic into English several sentences including lexical items whose specific senses restrict their use and applications in a particular context and within certain collocational patterns. The sources of the errors were identified and categorized. In backtracking the sources of the errors in each category, the study attempts to deduce the possible cognitive strategies employed by the students in dealing with a lexical choice difficulty. Hence, the study provides psycholinguistic empirical evidence on the lexical retrieval processes and strategies employed by second language (L2) learners in tackling lexical choice problems. Results of the study revealed that the students employ a range of first language (L1)-based and L2-based lexical retrieval strategies such as semantic association, semantic analogy, approximation and derivations.