The Effect of Contextual Clues and Topic Familiarity on L2 Lexical Inferencing and Retention

Abstract

espanolEl presente estudio tiene como el objetivo estudiar el efecto de las pruebas contextualizadas asi como los topicos familiarizados en la inferencia del lexico de L2 y tambien su retencion. Para este fin, fueron estudiados 67 estudiantes iranies de Ingles, L2 (muestras adaptadas al contexto variando el grado de familiarizacion) y oraciones simples (muestras no adaptadas al contexto) incluyendo los lexicos desconocidos, deduciendo el significado de las palabras desconocidas. El resultado revelaba: a) una taza de inferencia de 55.76%, b) el efecto de la cantidad del contexto asi como los topicos familiarizados en la inferencia lexical, c) el efecto de tiempo en el conocimiento de las palabras inferidas. d) factores principales que terminan en la inferencia incorrecta de las palabras objeto de estudio. EnglishThe present study examined the effect of contextual clues and topic familiarity on L2 lexical inferencing success and retention. To this end, 67 Iranian EFL learners read stories (cue-adequate contexts varying in degree of familiarity) and single sentences (cue-adequate contexts) including unknown lexical items and inferred the meaning of unknown words. Subsequently, they were tested on those words once immediately and once after two weeks. Results revealed an inferencing success rate of 55.76%, with success being significantly affected by the amount of contextual clues and topic familiarity. Moreover, it was found that although the effect of context on word meaning retention lasted for two weeks, the effect of topic familiarity decreased over time. Also, think-aloud protocols were used to identify main reasons leading participants to make incorrect inferences. The findings imply that lexical inferencing should be practiced in texts with adequate cues.