Coping with Lexical Gaps: Use of Compensatory Strategies by Iranian EFL Students

Alireza Hojati,Akbar Mirzaee

doi:10.24297/jal.v1i1.1987

Alireza Hojati, Akbar Mirzaee

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.24297/jal.v1i1.1987

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Abstract

Learners of English as a non-native anguage unavoidably confront situations in which insufficiency of their linguistic knowledge presents them with difficulties. There are also case in which the absence of some native-language lexical items in the target language is the source of problems the learners have to grapple with. This study focused on the phenomenon known as ˜lexical gap .The aim was to identify and examine the use of compensatory strategies employed by Iranian EFL students in coping with lexical gaps.To this end, number of Iranian undergraduate EFL students were selected and then split into two groups of intermediate-level and advanced-level. Both groups were given two written tasks requiring them to introduce eight Farsi words with no English counterparts to a typical native speaker of English. The analysis of data revealed well as the existence of some surprising differences between the frequencies of strategy use by the two groups.

Highlights

Different learners of foreign languages, including English, reach varying levels of language proficiency which often fall short of what is called „native-like fluency‟
What‟s more, there are a number of concepts and corresponding lexical items in some languages for which there are no target language counterparts or equivalents
Apart from needing to find ways of making themselves understood and preventing communication breakdowns from happening despite their having deficient knowledge of foreign languages, learners need to tackle a number of concepts and their corresponding words which exist in their L1s, but are absent in their L2s(English in the context of this study)

Summary

Introduction

Different learners of foreign languages, including English, reach varying levels of language proficiency which often fall short of what is called „native-like fluency‟. A lexical gap denotes “the absence in a language of a word for an object or concept”(p.108).A rather more complex definition of the term has been cited by Fisiak(1980), who defined it as “a lack of a lexeme in a language L2 with respect to L1 lexeme within a given comparable field( p. A number of other previous studies have focused on the examination of compensatory strategies such as „circumlocution‟ and „approximation‟ in dealing with lexical gaps by foreign learners and students of the English language. Campillo(2006), whose study focused on the identification and analysis of lexical gap-filling compensatory strategies, has reported that the strategy of using circumlocutions has the highest frequency of use by learners of English. 1.What compensatory strategies do intermediate-level Iranian EFL students use to cope with lexical gaps in their two written tasks?. 2.What compensatory strategies do advanced-level Iranian EFL students use to cope with lexical gaps in their two written tasks?. 5.Do advanced-level participants of the study make use of more L2-based compensatory strategies compared with intermediate-level participants?

Participants

Procedures

Results

Discussion and Conclusions