Vietnamese EFL Students’ Perceptions and Self-reported Use of Lexical Inferencing in L2 Reading

Abstract

Lexical inferencing has long been proven to play an important role in reading comprehension, specifically when it comes to strategies for dealing with unfamiliar terms in reading texts. Although much research has been done on the employment of lexical inferencing strategies in L2 reading, empirical evidence concerning the perceptions and practices of lexical inferencing strategies in Vietnamese contexts is just humble. To contribute to narrowing this gap, the current study is aimed to investigate Vietnamese EFL learners’ perceptions and self-reported use of lexical inferencing strategies in reading comprehension. Data were collected from 60 English-majored students at a private university in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam through a questionnaire. The results indicated that most students perceived lexical inferencing as being of significant values in L2 reading. As for the strategies in this regard, it was found that contextual and intralingual cues were commonly used in the participants’ lexical inferencing with the same level of frequency. It is suggested that more attention should be paid to lexical inferencing strategy instruction in EFL classrooms for the sake of students’ learning, especially their reading comprehension performance.