Abstract
When readers encounter new words they may try to infer their meanings from context. Such contextual inferences may be correct or incorrect. This research considered the effect of incorrect meaning inferences on contextual word learning in English as a second language. Chinese speakers encountered 48 novel vocabulary items in informative single-sentence English contexts and were instructed to infer their meanings. They were able to verify their inferences by reviewing dictionary-type definitions at the end of the learning procedure. Participants’ explicit knowledge of the critical vocabulary items was probed using a meaning generation task; their implicit knowledge was examined using a mixed-modality masked repetition priming lexical decision task. The results revealed a differential effect of incorrect inferences on the explicit and implicit knowledge of the vocabulary items. Explicit knowledge of meaning was less accurate after incorrect inferences than after correct inferences, but it was not worse than the knowledge gained when no explicit inference had been made. Implicit knowledge however was not affected by incorrect inferences. Pedagogical and research implications of the study findings are considered.
Highlights
The sentences were chosen to create reasonable opportunities for the participants to infer the meanings of the critical items from context (e.g., “A {pelmet} can frame the window space and conceal curtain rods.”; “Hard {pelmets} are usually made of wood; soft ones are in the same material as the curtains.”; “The main curtains should be topped with a {pelmet} and fall generously to the floor.”) During the first encounter with the critical item, the participants were instructed to read the sentence for meaning and listen to the audio recording of the item presented in brackets
There was a reliable effect of existing vocabulary knowledge, such that the participants with higher vocabulary levels test (VLT) scores were more accurate in generating the meaning of the critical words (z = 3.62, p = 0.0003)
The present study examined the effect of meaning inferences on contextual learning of novel L2 words
Summary
The relationship between contextual inferencing and word learning is not straightforward. Frishkoff, Collins-Thompson, Hodges and Crossley (2016) investigated whether, in contextual L1 word learning involving forced meaning generation (an approach that increases the risk of errors), the effect of erroneous guesses could be mitigated by providing immediate accuracy feedback. They found that the provision of feedback resulted in better word learning (measured by a meaning generation post-test), but only for mixed contexts (with some strong and some weak cues to the meaning of the target word). Materials and procedure All data in the learning and testing phases of the study were collected individually from each participant, in a computer lab
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