Abstract
The significance of vocabulary in second or foreign language cannot be denied. The study explores the knowledge sources used by ESL learners in generating the meanings of the unknown words found in the columns of a daily Dawn. The study also investigates the effect of text length and syntactic property of unknown words in the inferential behaviors of learners. The participants of the study were chosen randomly from BS English, Govt. Emerson College, Multan. The amended taxonomy of knowledge sources and clues given by Bengleil and Paribakht (2004) was used in the study. The inferences verbalized their thoughts while guessing the meanings of the unknown words. The higher group was more successful in their guessing than the lower group. The study also found out that text length and the syntactic property of an unknown word his impact on the process of lexical inferencing. The study recommends the strategy of lexical inferencing as it facilitates reading comprehension and enhances lexical knowledge of learners.
Highlights
Whenever the learners of a second or foreign language are asked to read texts written in target language, they encounter unknown words in these texts
The study explores the knowledge sources used by ESL learners in generating the meanings of the unknown words found in the columns of a daily Dawn
1) What types of knowledge sources in lexical inferencing are used by lower-proficiency learners and higher-proficiency learners while deducing the meanings of the unknown words encountered in Pakistan English newspaper columns?
Summary
Whenever the learners of a second or foreign language are asked to read texts written in target language, they encounter unknown words in these texts. It can be used as a compensatory strategy for overcoming the deficiency of learners. The news stories, the editorials, the letters to the editors and the newspaper columns have their own syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and lexical features. These genres of newspaper are acknowledged by the language experts. In the newspaper columns the journalists express their views on the current issues. They have their own ideologies and try their best to have influence on the readers
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