Abstract

This study explores lexical inferencing success among low-intermediate and low-

advanced Turkish EFL learners who are attending an English preparatory school and

investigates the relationship between inferential success and L2 reading proficiency

among these learners. Additionally, it looks into the knowledge sources that learners

make use of in inferring the meanings of unknown words from context. Analysis reveals

that although low-advanced learners are relatively more successful than the low-

intermediate learners, inferential success among Turkish EFL learners attending an

English preparatory school is overall low. Furthermore, the participants apparently

make use of mainly discourse knowledge and grammatical knowledge although they do

not resort to knowledge sources frequently and in a widespread manner. This article

discusses the findings in relation to previous research, and suggests pedagogical

implications of the findings.

Key words: Lexical inferencing, inferential success, guessing meaning from context,

reading comprehension.

1. Introduction

Reading is a multivariate skill that combines and integrates a variety of cognitive,

linguistic and non-linguistic skills rather than a single-factor process (Nassaji, 2003).

These skills involve the very basic low-level processing abilities employed in decoding

print and encoding visual configurations as well as high-level skills of syntax, semantics

and discourse, and higher-level knowledge of text representation and integration of

ideas with the reader’s global knowledge (Nassaji, 2003). Grabe (2009) also states that

it is crucial to recognize the role of lower-level and higher-level processes in

understanding the fluent reading process. Lower-level processes refer to word

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recognition -which is related to phonological processing, semantic and syntactic

processing, lexical access, morphological processing, automaticity and context-

syntactic parsing, meaning proposition encoding and working memory. Higher level

processes, on the other hand, include a text model of reader comprehension, a situation

model of reader interpretation, a set of reading skills and resources under the command

of the executive control mechanisms in working memory such as strategies, goals,

inferences, background knowledge and comprehension monitoring. Similarly, Koda

(2005) indicates that there are a number of essential components of reading, namely

word recognition, vocabulary knowledge, intra-word awareness and word knowledge,

information integration in sentence processing, discourse processing and text structure.

Considering the multifaceted nature of reading skill, it is plausible to assume that

shortcomings regarding either lower or higher level processes and other essential

components of reading may negatively affect reading proficiency and thus even general

L2 proficiency of EFL learners. Encountering many unknown words in a text, for

example, may adversely affect the reading comprehension of L2 readers (Nassaji,

2003). Unknown words may also prevent L2 readers from perceiving the reading texts

as a whole, and cause them to read word by word (Nassaji, 2003). Alderson (1984) also

notes that a weak command of vocabulary knowledge is likely to threaten the reading

process and/or make it seem an insuperable impediment (as cited in Kaivanpanah and

Mogaddam, 2012). It is reported that in order to overcome such an impediment, EFL

readers resort to different kinds of strategies to make up for the incomprehensible input

in general and lack of vocabulary knowledge in particular (Read, 2000). Oxford (1990)

maintains that good language learners are able to make educated guesses when

confronted with unknown words and/or phrases. Less skillful language learners, on the

other hand, often panic, ignore, or appeal to a dictionary and try to look up every

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unfamiliar word, which jeopardizes progress toward proficiency. Therefore, in addition

to unknown words, being unable to make profitable use of strategies in reading and

dealing with new words, as good language learners do, poses another obstacle in the

wake of effective and fluent reading. Accordingly, general reading strategies and

specifically the strategies to deal with the unknown words in a reading text become

more of an issue for EFL learners to make the most of reading.

Some procedures of reading strategies such as pre-reading exercises, skimming to

get the main idea and scanning for details, providing background information, helping

students infer word meanings, encouraging guessing, and focusing on global

comprehension in post-reading exercises matter to be skilled readers (Barnett, 1988).

Additionally, Carell (1987) underscores the necessity of pre-reading activities,

vocabulary instruction, instruction regarding how to comprehend conceptually complete

authentic texts and materials that are appropriate to the cultural schemata of the readers.

When it comes to the strategies to deal with the unknown words in a reading text,

Nassaji (2003) asserts that readers use a variety of strategies when they encounter new

words such as ignoring unknown words, looking up a dictionary, writing the unknown

word down to consult a teacher afterwards, and attempting to infer their meaning from

context. Research has shown that lexical inferencing, which simply refers to inferring

the meaning of unknown words thanks to all available linguistic and even non-linguistic

cues, is the most widely used strategy by L2 learners (Nassaji, 2003, Paribakht, 2004,

Qian, 2004). For this reason, a better understanding of lexical inferencing process and

the factors it involves that may potentially contribute to its accomplishment, a more

successful and fluent reading process and even incidental vocabulary learning is of

capital importance for ELT practitioners. Especially considering that EFL learners are

unlikely to be exposed to the target language outside the foreign language classroom

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and that classrooms and printed materials are the primary sources for them to learn the

language, enabling them to make the most of these two sources is of considerable value.

Starting from this point of view, the present paper first modestly attempts to provide

some insights into lexical inferencing and related research, and then report a relevant

experimental study conducted with Turkish speaking learners of English, as a

representative of EFL context.

2. Review of Literature

2.1. Gaining Insights into Lexical Inferencing

2.1. 1.What is lexical inferencing and how does it relate to reading

comprehension and lexical development?

The term lexical inferencing was first made prominent by Haastrup (1991), who

defines it as follows:

“The process of lexical inferencing involves making informed guesses as to the

meaning of a word in light of all available linguistic cues in combination with the

learners’ general knowledge of the world, her awareness of context and her relevant

linguistic knowledge.” (Haastrup, 1991, p.13)

As for how it relates to reading comprehension and lexical development, how young

children acquire their mother tongue sets an example. It is known that young children

preliminarily learn novel words, word forms and their meanings once they are exposed

to them through oral input provided by others (parents and other speakers of the

language). Later on, they master literacy skills and hereby appeal to reading as an

important context to continue acquiring new vocabulary (Nagy et al., 1985;

Nation&Coady, 1988; Sternberg, 1987, as cited in Wesche & Paribakht, 2009). L2

learners, especially EFL learners, on the other hand, are dependent more on written

texts to encounter and learn novel words as oral input relatively more limited in their

context. Wesche & Paribakht (2009) purport that although the reader’s primary concern

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is comprehension while reading, readers are likely to pay attention to a specific word

form, and accordingly may attempt to determine its meaning in the context it is

embedded. This may also initiate or push forward the challenging and progressive

process of vocabulary learning, and yield retention. For this very reason, lexical

inferencing is said to operate at the core of the relationship between reading

comprehension and vocabulary development (Wesche & Paribakht, 2009). Besides,

lexical inferencing seemingly contributes to the bidirectional relationship between

reading and vocabulary as reading provides opportunities to learn novel words, and

knowing many words gives way to a better understanding of reading texts.

At the beginning of 1980s, research demonstrated that boost in children’s L1

vocabulary once they start school might be related to incidental learning through

extensive reading. This being the case, L2 researchers also directed their attention to

reading as a means of vocabulary development. As a consequence, research on L2

reading comprehension, vocabulary learning through reading and lexical inferencing

accelerated (Wesche & Paribakht, 2009). Carton (1971) was the first to publish in

lexical inferencing (as cited in Wesche & Paribakht, 2009). He investigated the types of

cues to guess the meanings of unknown words, and categorized these cues into three as

intra-lingual (L2-based), inter-lingual (L1-based) and extra-lingual (world-knowledge-

based) cues. Following this, early research on lexical inferencing continued with

Bialystok (1983), Sternberg and Powell (1983), Bensoussan and Laufer (1984) and Liu

and Nation (1985), and the research gained prominence with Haastrup (1991), as

mentioned earlier in this paper (as cited in Wesche & Paribakht, 2009). Recent related

research will also be touched upon onwards.

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2.1.2. What factors influence lexical inferencing and its outcomes?

Wesche and Paribakht, (2009) indicate that there are factors that influence whether

L2 readers will attempt to infer the meanings of unknown words citing a number of

research studies identifying major ones of these factors such as text factors (Sternberg,

1987), word features (Parry, 1993), readers’ perception of the word’s importance

(Paribakht & Wesche, 1999; Brown, 1993; Fraser, 1999; Kim, 2003), if the word seems

to be easy to guess (Bensoussan & Laufer, 1994), and the word’s class (Paribakht &

Wesche, 1999). They further indicate that there are some other factors that influence

lexical inferencing success such as clarity of contextual clues, cue location (adjacent

versus distant), L2 proficiency, conceptual knowledge (e.g. background knowledge,

unfamiliar cultural patterns or unfamiliar topics), learner factors like their attention to

details and their ability to use the context effectively and their motivation to identify

contextual meaning. As well as general L2 proficiency, L2 reading proficiency and L2

vocabulary knowledge have predictive value for successful inferencing, and thus have

been widely investigated.

To begin with the relationship between L2 reading proficiency and lexical

inferencing, Paribakht (2004) investigated the effect of EFL learners' L2 reading

proficiency on their L2 lexical inferencing while reading an English expository text. A

group of intermediate and advanced Arabic-speaking Libyan students participated in the

study. An authentic English expository text, consisting of approximately 1000 words -

26 of which were determined as the target words- on environmental refugees was

selected and used to elicit the participants' inferencing behavior through think-aloud

protocols. The think-aloud protocols were transcribed and analyzed to find out the

knowledge sources and contextual clues that the participants used during the lexical

inferencing test. As a result, the famous taxanomy of knowledge sources used in L2

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lexical inferencing by Paribakht and Bengeleil, which has been widely used by many a a

researcher interested in lexical inferencing, was created. According to this taxanomy,

the sources fall into two main categories as linguistic sources and nonlinguistic sources.

Linguistic sources fall into two subcategories as intralingual sources and interlingual

sources. Intralingual sources refer to target word level sources such as word

morphology, homonymy and word association; sentence level sources such as sentence

meaning, syntagmatic relations, paradigmatic relations, grammar and punctuation, and

discourse level sources such as discourse meaning and formal schemata. Intralingual

sources, on the other hand, refer to lexical knowledge –like borrowed words- and word

collocation. Lastly, non-linguistic sources cover knowledge of topic and knowledge of

medical terms. It was found that the intermediate group used multiple sources more

often and showed more variation in the combinations of knowledge sources and

contextual cues they used in inferencing than the advanced group although it was

reported that the both groups made use of single as well as multiple knowledge sources

when guessing the meaning of a given target word. It was also found that the advanced

learners had a higher percentage of correct and partially correct and a lower percentage

of wrong inferences than the intermediate-level readers. Another finding of the study

was that there were gains in the participants’ knowledge of the words immediately after

inferencing and over time; however, these gains were not significant either within or

across groups. As for the combined sample, on the other hand, a significant rate of

learning and retention was found. Similarly, Shen and Wu (2009) examined if technical

university EFL learners’ reading proficiency affects their lexical inferencing

performance and their responses to the contextual instruction. The data were collected

in three stages. In the first stage (week 1), students took a standardized reading

proficiency test to determine their foreign language reading proficiency. In the second

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stage (week 2), all participants took the first lexical inferencing test (pretest) and

responded retrospectively to the vocabulary strategy questionnaire. Upon completion of

the 15-week treatment program, a post-test was administered to all the participants. As

with the pre-test, four short stories in the same test format and same level of difficulty

were used in the post-test. After the test, the same strategies questionnaire was

administered to examine if each student’s perception of strategy use changed after

instruction. Results revealed a significant correlation between learners’ reading

proficiency and their lexical inferencing ability,. This indicates that the higher their

reading proficiency, the better their performance in lexical inferencing ability.

Additionally, a significant correlation was found between learners’ reading proficiency

and their strategy use for lexical inferencing, which means that the higher the learners’

reading proficiency is, the more frequent the learners use strategies for lexical

inferencing. To investigate if the learners’ foreign language reading proficiency has an

effect on their responses to the treatment of lexical inferencing ability and strategy use,

the score difference between the pre-test and post-test was calculated and analyzed. As a

result, positive correlation was found between the learners’ reading proficiency and

their pre-post-test lexical inferencing score difference. This finding indicates that the

learners with better reading proficiency demonstrated better treatment effect on their

lexical inferencing ability. However, when it comes to the treatment effect on strategy

use, a slightly negative correlation was found between the learners’ reading proficiency

and the post-and pre-test difference on their strategy use. This means that the learners

with higher reading proficiency did not demonstrate more treatment effect on their

strategy use for inferring word meaning. In a similar vein, Parel (2004) attempted to

demonstrate that low receptive vocabulary, which might negatively affect L2 reading

comprehension, could be compensated for thanks to the ability to select and implement

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word-appropriate lexical inferencing strategies. For this purpose, pairs of students,

matched for reading proficiency level, but juxtaposed in relation to their vocabulary

knowledge, were administered a lexical inferencing test, in which they were required to

guess the meanings of underlined words embedded in sentences that they were shown

one by one, and predict the upcoming words. As a result, it was reported that

individuals at the same levels of reading proficiency but different levels of vocabulary

knowledge were reported to differ with regard to the ability to select and implement

word appropriate lexical inferencing strategies. The participants assumed to be better at

vocabulary were reported to be more successful in lexical inferencing and made a

higher number of plausible predictions. These findings indicate that sensitivity to word

structure, when combined with information from the context, can lower the threshold

for receptive vocabulary knowledge in relation to text demands.

Besides L2 reading proficiency, both depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge

matter with regard to successful lexical inferencing. Nassaji (2006), for example,

scrutinized the relationship between ESL learners’ depth of vocabulary knowledge, their

lexical inferencing strategy use and their success in deriving word meaning from

context. 21 adult intermediate-level ESL learners coming from a variety of L1

backgrounds were divided into two groups as lexically skilled (LS) and lexically less

skilled (LLS) depending on their scores from a depth of vocabulary knowledge test, and

an 374-word text was administered as the lexical inferencing text, in which the

participants were asked to guess the meanings of 10 target words in think-aloud

protocols. LS group was found to have performed significantly better than LLS group

with regard to the lexical inferencing test, indicating that depth of vocabulary

knowledge plays a crucial role in lexical inferencing success among ESL learners. It

was also found that LS and LLS groups significantly differed in their overall rate of

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success in inferring the meanings of unknown words. Results indicated that LS readers

employed local word-based strategies (identifying) less frequently than the LLS readers;

however, they benefitted more from this strategy. LS readers benefited more from the

monitoring strategy than the LLS readers did, too. When it comes to the evaluating

strategy, however, no significant difference was observed between the two groups. The

above findings indicate that depth of vocabulary knowledge plays an important role in

the types of lexical inferencing strategies that ESL learners employ as well as how

effective they use these strategies. Further findings revealed that learners’ depth of

vocabulary knowledge is a much stronger predictor of inferential success than lexical

inferencing strategy use. In other words, depth of vocabulary knowledge significantly

contributed to inferential success both on its own and over and above lexical inferencing

strategy use. Lexical inferencing strategy use, on the other hand, significantly predicted

lexical inferencing success when entered as the first variable to the model; however, its

contribution failed to reach significance when entered to the model after depth of

vocabulary knowledge.

Ehsanzadeh (2012) also aimed at exploring the roles of depth and breadth of lexical

repertoire in L2 lexical inferencing success and incidental vocabulary acquisition

through reading. Statistically significant intercorrelations were found between depth and

breadth of lexical repertoire and incidental vocabulary acquisition. However, the depth

of word knowledge was found to have a higher correlation with meaning retention than

does the breadth of word knowledge. Similarly, the intercorrelations among L2 lexical

inferencing success, depth and breadth of word knowledge were both positive and

significant. Yet, depth of vocabulary knowledge correlated more with the lexical

inferencing success than the breadth of vocabulary knowledge. Additionally, depth of

word knowledge accounted for 58% of the variance in the lexical inferencing success.

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The breadth of word knowledge, on the other hand, contributed only an additional 8%

of the variance in lexical inferencing success. However, the breadth of vocabulary

knowledge alone explained 40% of the variance in lexical inferencing when first entered

to the regression model. The depth of lexical repertoire explained an additional 26% of

the variance in the lexical inferencing success. The additional contributions of both

depth and breadth were non-significant, though. It is clear from the findings that both

depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge correlate with and contribute to lexical

inferencing and vocabulary retention; however, the role of depth of vocabulary

knowledge is greater than that of the breadth. On the contrary, Hatami and Tavakoli

(2012), in their study with 50 Iranian students majoring in English literature, found that

breadth of vocabulary knowledge significantly accounts for 37% of the variance in

lexical inferencing as well as significantly contributing to lexical inferencing above and

beyond depth of vocabulary knowledge. Depth of vocabulary knowledge, on the other

hand, significantly accounts for 29% of the variance in lexical inferencing. However, it

fails to significantly contribute to lexical inferencing above and beyond breadth of

vocabulary knowledge. These findings indicate that breadth of vocabulary knowledge is

a stronger predictor of lexical inferencing success than depth of vocabulary knowledge.

They further found that both depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge are

inextricably linked to lexical inferencing success, whereas there is no significant

relationship between the two aspects of vocabulary knowledge (depth and breadth) and

the perceived ease of inferencing.

Two other factors that seemingly affect lexical inferencing are topic familiarity and

passage-sight vocabulary. Pulido (2007) investigated their impact on lexical inferencing

and retention conducting a study with 35 English speaking adult Spanish learners.

Results yielded a significant impact of topic familiarity on lexical inferencing. This

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means that learners are able to come up with more correct guess while they are reading

about a more familiar scenario compared to less familiar scenarios. However, the effects

of topic familiarity on perceived ease or difficulty in guessing were inconsistent.

Similarly, it had inconsistent effects on lexical retention after the inference verification

task to promote revision, integration, and retention. When it comes to the passage sight

vocabulary, it was also reported to play a significant role in lexical inferencing for new

words during the reading tasks. This indicates that as passage sight vocabulary increases

so does ability to correctly infer target words’ meanings. Passage sight vocabulary also

consistently predicted lexical retention, although the effect sizes were not as strong as

on the lexical inferencing measure. Sara, Parviz and Keivan (2013) also explored the

effects of topic familiarity and passage sight vocabulary on L2 lexical inferencing. The

target group was Iranian EFL learners this time. It was found that topic familiarity had a

statistically significant impact on L2 lexical inferencing. There were considerably more

correct target word inferences when reading about a more familiar scenario compared to

a less familiar scenario. Similarly, increase in passage sight vocabulary knowledge

increased the ability to infer the meanings of the target words correctly. When it comes

to the relationship between topic familiarity/passage sight vocabulary knowledge and

perceived ease of lexical inferencing, it was reported that the difference in the

perception of the participants in inferring the meanings of the target words of the more

and less familiar scenarios was not statistically significant, indicating that the

participants’ perception of ease of lexical inferencing did not vary according to topic

familiarity. Finally, a slightly stronger relationship was found between passage sight

vocabulary knowledge and ease of lexical inferencing in the less familiar scenarios

compared to the more familiar ones. This finding was interpreted as follows: when the

participants did not have the relevant schematic knowledge to assist them in lexical

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inferencing process (in other words, when they were less familiar with a reading text),

they resorted to passage sight vocabulary to help them.

Kaivanpanah and Alavi (2008) examined the contribution of grammatical

knowledge to inferring the meaning of unknown words through introspective think-

aloud protocols. Consequentially, Grammar knowledge was found to influence lexical

inferencing ability of L2 learners in simple and complex texts. The results also indicated

that learners representing different ability groups with respect to grammar knowledge

perform differently on the simple and complex texts. The comparison of the means

demonstrates that participants were more successful in inferencing in syntactically

simple texts.

Shen (2010) examined the effects of perceptual learning style preferences on L2

lexical inferencing and whether learners with certain perceptual learning styles

benefited more from an explicitly instructional program. A total of 145 Taiwanese

learners of English were classified into different learning styles such as visual, auditory,

kinesthetic, tactile, group and individual to be provided with the context clues and

inference strategies within a 15-week program. Results indicated that prior to the

instruction, learners with group learning style as their major style performed better than

the others in lexical inferencing ability. Group learners were followed by individual

learners, kinesthetic, tactile, auditory, and visual learners. When it comes to the post

test, it was found that auditory learners achieved the higher gain mean than the others,

while the group learners ranked the lowest, comparing pre-test and post-test results.

Additionally, the significant treatment effect was found on the visual learners as well as

the auditory learners. In sum, the order of the effect of instruction on contextual

inference was as follows: auditory learners > visual learners > individual learners >

kinesthetic learners > tactile learners > group learners. In other words, although

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instruction of inference strategy was effective for the learners, learners with certain

perceptual learning style preference, namely auditory and visual learners, benefited

more from the explicit instruction.

Finally, lexicalization status of L2 words in a learner’s L1, which refers to L2

words’ having lexical equivalents in the L1, is said to be indirectly related to lexical

inferencing success (Wesche & Paribakht, 2009).

2.1.3. What processes are involved in lexical inferencing and how have they

been conceptualized and theoretically explained?

Wesche and Paribakht (2009) point out that researchers have found theoretical

frameworks to make lexical inference and its outcomes fit in. Within these frameworks,

lexical inferencing, like inferencing in general, is referred to as a multidimensional

cognitive process that involves both declarative and procedural components. Of these

frameworks, the first to spring to mind is knowledge sources, as a lexically linked

framework. Knowledge sources simply refers to finding information about words

(Nation, 2001). It includes analyzing the word (affixes and stems), using context,

consulting a reference source in L1 or L2 (written formal sources like dictionaries,

glossaries or concordances, and more spontaneous sources like asking teachers, native

speakers or other learners) and using parallels in L1 and L2 (Nation, 2001:218).

Descriptive taxonomies of knowledge sources use by different groups of learners have

been created by a variety of researchers. A very common one of these taxonomies,

formed by Paribakht and Bengeleil (2004), is provided below.

I. Linguistic sources

A. Intra-lingual sources

1. Target word levela. word morphology b. homonymyc. word association

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2. Sentence levela. sentence meaningb. syntagmatic relations c. paradigmatic relations d. grammare. punctuation

3. Discourse levela. discourse meaning b. formal schemata

B. Inter-lingual sources

1. Lexical knowledge 2. Word collocation

II. Non-linguistic sources

A. Knowledge of topic

B. Knowledge of medical terms

(Paribakht and Bengeleil, 2004:231, Figure 1: The taxonomy of knowledge sources

used in L2 lexical inferencing,)

Nassaji (2003), on the other hand, defined five main categories of knowledge

sources, namely grammatical knowledge, morphological knowledge, world knowledge,

L1 knowledge and discourse knowledge. Qian (2005) makes a mention of three main

categories of knowledge sources as location of clues (e.g. within the test word, context

within T-unit and context beyond T-unit), knowledge of the world and intra-lingual

vocabulary knowledge (e.g. phonological/orthographic forms, morphology, syntax and

meaning). Although these taxonomies differ in name or number of categories they

include, they all rely on the starting point of Carton’s three major cue categories,

namely inter-lingual, intra-lingual and extra-lingual, as previously mentioned in the

present paper.

Within lexically linked frameworks of lexical inferencing, connectionism is also

worth mentioning. Connectionism, also known as associative networks or parallel

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distributive processing theory, can be applied to motor aspects of articulation and to the

perceptual aspects of vocabulary acquisition (Ellis, 1994, 2002, as cited in Wesche &

Paribakht, 2009). In this sense, it helps explain the regular and steady familiarization

with novel words encountered in reading.

On the other hand, lexical inferencing also fits in comprehension-oriented

frameworks on the grounds that it is essential for word comprehension just as general

inferencing ability is so for text comprehension. As is seen, lexical inferencing is related

to both language comprehension and acquisition. In addition to this, it functions as a

bridge between comprehension and acquisition. In so doing, it is supported by Gass’

(1988, 1997) input processing, formulated to characterize stages in the acquisition of

new syntactic knowledge (as cited in Wesche & Paribakht, 2009). In other words, input

processing helps explain why some unknown words go unnoticed, while some others

are superficially perceived, and still some others are understood in context through

inferencing.

2.2. Other Related Research on Lexical Inferencing

One of the prominent studies on lexical inferencing was conducted by Nassaji

(2003), who examined the use of strategies and knowledge sources in L2 lexical

inferencing and their relationship with inferential success. Data were collected through

think-aloud protocols, in which 21 adult ESL learners (10 males and 11 females)

coming from a variety of L1 backgrounds were required to verbalize their thoughts

regarding how they guessed the meanings of the target words. As a result of counting

successful, partially successful and unsuccessful inferences, it was found that

intermediate-level ESL learners are not very good at guessing the meaning of unknown

words in a reading text. Moreover, there were five knowledge sources employed,

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namely grammatical knowledge, morphological knowledge, L1 knowledge, world

knowledge and discourse knowledge, and six strategies, namely repeating (word

repeating and section repeating), verifying, analyzing, monitoring, self-inquiry and

analogy. World knowledge was reported to be the most frequently used strategy, while

word repeating was the most frequently used strategy. It is worth mentioning that not all

the students used all the knowledge sources and strategies and there was variation

among them with regard to the types of knowledge sources and strategies. Additionally,

morphological knowledge contributed to lexical inferencing success more than the other

knowledge sources. The percentages of successful inferences for each knowledge

source did not significantly differ from each other, whereas the percentages of

successful inferences for each lexical inferencing strategy significantly differed from

each other, indicating that inferential success depended significantly on what kind of

strategy learners used, but not what kind of knowledge source was used. Tavakoli and

Hayati (2011), on the other hand, examined how two different language proficiency

groups of Iranian EFL learners (high-intermediate versus low-intermediate) use lexical

inferencing strategies to guess the meanings of a number of unknown words embedded

in four reading passages. Results showed that for each reading passage, low-

intermediate learners made more inferences; however, intermediate learners made more

accurate guesses. It was also found that the two proficiency groups differed in their use

of knowledge sources. Further analysis of the data revealed that the students at low-

intermediate level focused more on the words and their syntactic category, while the

students at high-intermediate level preferred the discourse knowledge and tried to

understand the whole passage. It was also found that gender, one of the concerns of the

study, played no role regarding the type of inferencing strategy used and the success of

the participants’ guesses. In addition to language proficiency and gender, Gao (2012)

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investigated the differentiations and homologies of Chinese undergraduates in terms of

lexical inference ability and lexical inference strategy use with regard to major. Results

indicated that students of different language proficiency, gender and major do perform

differentially in test in terms of lexical inferencing strategy use and lexical inferencing

ability, even though some are significant and some are not.

Some related studies were carried out in Turkish context, as well. For example,

Akkan (2008) investigated Turkish university preparatory school EFL learners’

awareness and use of English affixes as a knowledge source in guessing the meanings

of unknown words in written contexts and examined their use of prefixes and suffixes

separately. Results indicated that Turkish EFL learners use a variety of knowledge

sources, one of which is word morphology, when attempting to infer the meanings of

unknown words in written context. Despite this, it was reported that they did not do it

very often. Moreover, the participants appeared to use both suffixes and prefixes nearly

equally; however, their prefix use seemed to be associated with more successful guesses

than suffix use in spite of the participants’ unfamiliarity with prefixes in their L1

(Turkish). İstifçi (2009) analyzed how a group of Turkish EFL learners (intermediate

and low-intermediate level) guessed the meanings of a number of unknown words

embedded in four authentic texts. The participants were asked to guess the meanings of

the unknown words embedded in the reading passages, and write down how they did

this and what strategies they made use of. When it comes to the data analysis, all correct

inferences were counted and their percentages were taken, and the sources used by the

intermediate and low-intermediate level learners were compared. Results revealed that

for each reading passage, low-intermediate learners made more inferences (except the

forth reading passage in which low intermediate level learners 66 inferences, whereas

intermediate level learners made 79 inferences); however, intermediate learners made

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more accurate guesses. The discourse knowledge category was the one which was

mostly used by the students at both levels. This indicates that both low-intermediate and

intermediate level learners used their knowledge of cohesive devices to link the words

in the texts, in which the intermediate level learners were more successful. The second

most frequently used category was the world knowledge. When it comes to the

homonymy category, the low-intermediate level students used more sound relations

between words in L2, and all their guesses were successful. This finding indicates that

low L2 proficiency learners often try to associate new words by using phonetic

similarities, which is also in line with the previous research. In terms of morphology,

low-intermediate level learners were reported to try to infer the meanings from their

inflections, derivations and the morphological relationship between words. It is worth

mentioning that they were successful in using this inferencing strategy. With regard to

cognates, low-intermediate level learners made use of them relatively more than the

intermediate levels. However, it is crucially important to note that “cognates” refers to

borrowed terms in this study. Considering all of the results mentioned above, the

researcher arrives at the conclusion that although low-intermediate level learners use

more lexical inferencing strategies in proportion to intermediate level learners, the latter

come up with more successful guesses. This implies that students at low-intermediate

level need to be trained to infer the meanings of unknown words. Akpinar (2013) also

examined how Turkish EFL learners handle unknown words while reading English texts

through think-aloud protocols. It further investigated the relationship between these

learners’ perceptions and actual practices regarding the employment of knowledge

sources while trying to guess the meaning of unknown words. The findings of this

study, in which a group of ELT learners were tested on Vocabulary Strategy Survey and

Lexical Inferencing Test, revealed a significant negative weak correlation between the

19

perceptions and actual practice of the participants regarding how they handle unknown

vocabulary while reading English texts. This indicates that the higher the perceptions of

the students are, the lower their actual practices in lexical inferencing.

Cross-linguistic studies investigating lexical inferencing do exist, too. For example,

Wang (2011) examined the lexical strategies used by Filipino graduate students and

Chinese graduate students when they encounter unknown words while reading. The

findings indicated that the Chinese graduate students, compared with the Filipino

graduate students, preferred using lexical strategies more to deal with unknown words.

Furthermore, notable distinctions were found in using inferring strategies between the

Filipino graduate students and the Chinese graduate students. First, the two groups

differed in the lexical strategies they preferred. For example, the Chinese graduate

students preferred making use of strategy of guessing using discourse context, that is,

using outside the sentence in which the word occurred, guessing using local (sentence-

level) context and guessing using visual form (similarity or morphological

understanding), whereas more Filipino graduate students than the Chinese graduate

students chose to utilize using syntactic knowledge and extra textual (thematic or world)

knowledge. Second, compared with the Filipino graduate students, the Chinese graduate

students made more wrong inferences of unknown words they encountered in reading

English although they could recognize the unknown words. Third, more unsuccessful

inference of the unknown words was made by Chinese students, and the discrepancy of

the Chinese students‟ level of vocabulary knowledge is much larger than that of the

Filipino students as far as the standard deviations are concerned. Fourth, the occurrence

of unknown words seemed to have an influence on the lexical inferencing used by the

Filipino graduate students but not on the inferencing strategies by the Chinese graduate

students. Lastly, the Chinese graduate students appeared to gain some words through

20

incidental learning when using lexical inferencing to deal with these unknown words,

while the Filipino graduate students did not report learning any other word except one.

3. The Present Study

The present study aims at exploring whether Turkish EFL learners from two

different reading proficiency groups, namely low-advanced and low-intermediate,

attending an English preparatory school, are able to infer the meanings of unknown

words while reading. . In addition to this, what knowledge sources they make use of in

so doing is also investigated. It is worth mentioning that the two reading proficiency

groups are compared in order to probe the role of L2 reading proficiency in lexical

inferencing success and use of knowledge sources. For these purposes, the present paper

seeks for answers to the following research questions:

1. How successful are the low-advanced and low-intermediate Turkish EFL learners

in guessing the meanings of unknown words?

a. What is the role of L2 reading proficiency in this success?

2. What are the knowledge sources that low-advanced and low-intermediate Turkish

EFL learners employ to infer the meanings of unknown words?

3.1. Participants

A total of fifty-two Turkish EFL students, who were studying at the preparatory

school of Anadolu University, participated in the present study. According to Common

European Framework of References for Languages (CEFR), half of the participants

were at B2 level, while the other half were at B1 level. However, Anadolu University

School of Foreign Languages prefers to split B1 and B2 levels into two as B1.1 - B1.2

and B2.1 - B2.2, aiming to elaborate the learning outcomes for each level and better

equip the learners with these outcomes. In view of this fact, the participants of the

current study fall into B2.2 and B1.2 levels, which are assumed to correspond to low-

21

intermediate and low-advanced levels respectively. These language proficiency levels of

the participants were determined by EMT (End of Module Test) that they sat a week

before the data collection commenced. The following explanation would better help to

confirm the participants’ L2 proficiency level. This study was conducted within the very

first week of the second module of 2013-2014 spring term. At the beginning of the fall

term, the participants, like all the other students at the same school, took a placement

test followed by a proficiency exam (including listening comprehension, reading

comprehension, language use, writing and speaking), which was determinant on the

proficiency level each student would be in in the first module. At the end of each two-

month time, they sat the EMT, which was determinant on the proficiency level they

would be in in the second module. As a result, considering that the participants of the

present study sat the same reliable and valid test, and the data collection of the present

study was carried out right after they sat this test, it is possible to safely arrive at the

conclusion that the participants were at the aforementioned language proficiency levels.

There were 30 males and 22 females, with their ages ranging from 18 to 27. They were

all monolinguals with the native language being Turkish, and no participant included in

the current study had an extended stay in an English speaking country.

3.2. Instruments

Two main testing instruments were utilized for the accomplishment of the present

study. First, the participants’ reading comprehension was assessed using a shortened

paper-based TOEFL reading post-test (Appendix A). The test was adapted from

Longman Preparation Course for the TOEFL Test (Philips, 2003). In the original test,

there were five short reading texts (composed of two or three paragraphs) followed by

nine to eleven multiple-choice questions. The time limit for the original test was 55

minutes. However, in the present study, the first four short reading passages were used c.

22

There were a total of forty multiple-choice questions. 45 minutes were allocated for this

shortened version of the test considering the number of questions and the time limit in

the original study. Prior to the administration of this test, the participants were told that

this test was designed to measure their ability to read and understand short passages

similar in topic and style to those that students in North American universities and

colleges are likely to encounter for their studies. They were additionally provided with a

sample paragraph followed by two sample questions. Second, a reading text was used as

the lexical inferencing instrument (Appendix B). It was a 374-word text used in Nassaji

(2003). There were 10 target words embedded in the original study. In the present study,

these target words have been modified according to the findings gathered from the pilot

study (See Appendix C for the pilot study). The target words in the original text were

squalor, affluence, waver, contract, sewage, curative, assess, hazard, unfathomable and

permeate. The pilot study revealed that two students (5%) knew the meaning of sewage;

another two students (5%) knew the meaning of curative; 12 students (28%) knew the

meaning of assess; 13 students (31%) knew the meaning of hazard, and 1 student (2%)

knew the meaning of permeate as they were used in the reading text to be used.

Therefore, these words (sewage, curative, assess, hazard, permeate) have been replaced

by the following ones respectively: sewerage, sanative, appraise, peril, imbue.

Frequency of occurrence was determinant on choosing these words. The following table

provides the tokens found for each word in the original text and those determined for

the purpose of the present study according to COCA (Corpus of Contemporary

American English).

23

Table 1: Frequency occurrence of the target words that were taken from the

original study along with that of the ones they have been replaced with.

Nassaji (2003) Tokens The present study Tokens

Sewage 3,178 Sewerage 133

Curative 317 Sanative 1

Assess 11,160 Appraise 317

Hazard 2,995 Peril 1,798

Permeate 426 Imbue 185

The target words are all content words consisting of four nouns, four verbs, and two

adjectives. The reading passage was chosen because it contained a minimum number of

words that the participants would not know. In other words, a big proportion of the

reading text with the vocabulary it contains –except the target words-, grammar

structures and length of sentences was comprehensible. Additionally, the topic was not

very familiar to the participants. Moreover, words invited the use of various knowledge

sources and a range of word classes were presented. The text statistics and readability

indices are shown in Table 2 . These results mean that the text is easily readable.

Table 2 : Text Statistics and Readability Indices

Text Statistics

Number of sentences 20

Number of words 375

Number of complex words 39

Percent of complex words 10.40%

Readability Indices

Flesh Kincaid Reading Ease 66.4

Flesh Kinkaid Grade Level 8.7

24

3.3. Data Collection

Data collection took two weeks. At the beginning of the first week, the very first

week of the new module, a pilot study was conducted to ensure that the target words

were unfamiliar to the participants. A total of 42 participants of varying L2 proficiency,

predominantly advanced learnersa, were given a list of the target words in a

decontextualized way, and asked to write down whether they knew the meanings of

those words, and to write L1 equivalents for each if they knew. At the end of the first

week, the actual participants of the present study sat a forty-item paper-based TOEFL

reading text. All of the participants were required to complete this test in a total of 45

minutes. b The following week, first of all, the participants were given a list of the target

words whose meanings they would be asked to infer later, and asked to write down their

meanings if they knew so that the data coming from the participants who provided the

correct definitions or L1 equivalents would be excluded from the analysis. However, as

it was expected, none of the participants provided correct definitions or L1 equivalents

for the decontextualized target words. Next, the lexical inferencing test was

administered with no time limit. The participants were instructed to read the text and

determine the meanings of the bold-faced target words along with describing what

helped them to do so on a separate piece of paper. The participants were allowed to use

L1 (Turkish).

4. Data Analysis and Results

Depending on its findings, the present study arrived at the conclusion that although

low-advanced learners were found to be relatively more successful than the low-

intermediate learners, inferential success among Turkish EFL learners attending a

preparatory school was overall low. In addition to this, it was found that the participants

25

made use of mainly discourse knowledge and grammatical knowledge although they did

not resort to knowledge sources frequently and in a widespread manner.

4.1.1. Success of Lexical Inferencing

To be able to answer the first research question -How successful are the low-

advanced and low-intermediate Turkish EFL learners in guessing the meanings of

unknown words, and what is the role of L2 reading proficiency in this success?-, first,

an independent samples t-test was conducted to see if the two groups –low-intermediate

and low-advanced learners- significantly differed in their reading comprehension so that

their inferential success could be compared. It was found that the low-advanced learners

(M=22, SD=4.24) scored significantly better than the low-intermediate learners (M=8,

SD=3.28) with regard to the scores they obtained from the TOEFL reading subtest

(t(50)=13.302, p<.001). This finding confirmed that the inferential success of the two

groups could be compared in terms of their varying reading proficiency.

Second, the data coming from the lexical inferencing task were analyzed by the

researcher and a colleague who is an experienced English instructor. It is worth

mentioning that the data coming from eight participants were excluded as they did not

seriously attempt to infer the meanings of the target words, thus making the total

number of low-advanced and low-intermediate participants 20 and 24 respectively. The

participants’ responses to each of the unknown words were rated using a three-point

scale (2=successful, 1=partially successful, 0=unsuccessful). Successful inferencing was

defined as responses that were semantically, syntactically and contextually appropriate.

It could be both a synonym and a full definition of the target word either in L2 (English)

or L1 (Turkish). Semantically appropriate but syntactically deviant responses, or vice

versa, were rated as partially successful. When the response was neither semantically

nor syntactically appropriate, it was rated as unsuccessful. To be able to provide a

26

framework of contextually appropriate responses, the reading text, with the target words

being removed, was presented to two native speakers of English, who were working as

language teaching assistants at the home university of the study during the

implementation. They were requested to complete the sentences with contextually

appropriate words. They were also reminded that they could write more than a single

word for each gap so that alternative words could be gathered. If the participants

responded to the inferencing task with any of the words provided by the native speakers,

they were rated successful. When there were disagreements between the two raters (the

researcher and a colleague) regarding if a response was successful, partially successful

or unsuccessful, these two native speakers of English were consulted.

Results let out a total of 362 inferences and 78 cases of no-attempt to infer the

meanings of the unknown words. Of these, 184 (50.8%) inferences belonged to the low-

advanced group, while 178 (49.2%) inferences came from the low-intermediate group.

Of the 184 inferences that the low-advanced group made, 59 (32%) were successful, 43

(23%) were partially successful, 66 (36%) were unsuccessful and 16 (9%) were ignored.

Of the 178 inferences that the low-intermediate group made, only 11 (6%) were

successful, 46 (26%) were partially successful, 59 (33%) were unsuccessful and 62

(35%) were ignored. These findings indicate that although low-advanced learners were

found to be relatively more successful than the low-intermediate learners, inferential

success is overall low. Table 3 below makes a summary of these findings.

Table 3: Inferential success

S % PS % US % I %Low-advanced

59 32% 43 23% 66 36% 16 9%

Low-intermediate

11 6% 46 26% 59 33% 62 35%

S: Successful, PS: Partially Successful, US: Unsuccessful, I: Ignored

27

Second, an independent samples t-test was carried out to find out if the two groups

significantly differed in their lexical inferencing success. Consequentially, it was found

that there was a statistically significant difference between the low-advanced learners

(M=7.95, SD=2.08) and low-intermediate learners (M=2.88, SD=2.09) with regard to

inferential success (t(42)=8.01, p<.001). This finding indicates that the low-advanced

participants, whose reading proficiency was also significantly better, were more

successful in inferring the meanings of the unknown target words from context than the

low-intermediate participants. That the finding is significant means that low advanced

learners are more successful in inferring the meanings of unknown target words from

context than low-intermediate learners in the whole population, namely Turkish EFL

learners attending an English preparatory school. Another independent samples t-test

was conducted to find out whether the two different language (and reading) proficiency

groups differed in their attempts to guess the meanings of the unknown target words

from context. It came out that the low-advanced (M=2.63, SD=2.31) group showed

significantly more cases of no attempt to infer the meanings of the unknown target

words from context than the low-advanced group (M=.80, SD=1.00), t(32.54)=-3.48,

p<.01. The two findings above clearly lays bare that the low-advanced learners tried

more to guess the meanings of the unknown words and became more successful in

doing so than the low-intermediate learners. Moreover, these two findings are

generalizable to the whole population (Turkish EFL learners attending an English

preparatory school) as they are both statistically significant.

Furthermore, the participants differed in their responses to each target word. Table 4

below presents the participants’ inferential success for each target word. According to

this table, the order of successful inferencing of the low-advanced learners for each

target word was as follows: sanative > sewerage > unfathomable = imbue > squalor >

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waver > appraise > peril > affluence > contract. The order of unsuccessful inferencing

of the low-advanced learners for each target word was not exactly the opposite; it was

as follows: contract > affluence > waver > appraise > peril > squalor > unfathomable >

imbue. “Peril” was found to be the most frequently ignored word (four times) for the

low-advanced group. When it comes to the low-intermediate group, the order of their

successful inferencing for each word is as follows: sewerage > sanative > appraise >

squalor = unfathomable > affluence > waver > contract = peril > imbue (no successful

infrencing at all). Just like the low-advanced group, “contract” was the word whose

meaning the low-intermediate learners was the least successful to infer. Lastly,

“unfathomable” was the most frequently ignored word (12 times) for the low-

intermediate group.

Table 4: Inferential success for each target word.

Low-Advanced Low-IntermediateTarget Words

S PS US I S PS US I

sewerage 4 11 4 1 1 18 4 1

waver 6 2 12 - 2 1 16 5

appraise - 8 11 1 - 8 13 3

contract 2 - 18 - 1 - 20 3

squalor 8 4 5 3 4 2 10 8

sanative 11 6 3 - - 9 11 4

affluence 3 - 14 3 - 4 14 6

unfathomabl

e

13 - 5 2 2 4 7 11

peril 1 6 9 4 1 - 11 12

imbue 7 6 5 2 - - 15 9

S: Successful, PS: Partially Successful, US: Unsuccessful, I: Ignored

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Finally, in order to gain insights into the relationship between lexical inferencing

success and reading proficiency for each participant, Pearson Correlation Coefficients

were run. Results yielded a significant positive high correlation between inferential

success and TOEFL reading subtest scores r=.76, p<.001. Such a finding indicates that

as the reading scores go up or go down so does the inferential success, or vice versa.

Table 5: The relationship between lexical inferencing success and reading proficiency.

Reading Scores Inferential Success

Reading ScoresPearson Correlation 1 .761**

Sig. (2-tailed) .000N 44 44

Inferential SuccessPearson Correlation .761** 1Sig. (2-tailed) .000

N 44 44

** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

4.1.2. Knowledge Sources

To be able to answer the second research question, concerning the knowledge

sources that low-advanced and low-intermediate Turkish EFL learners employ to infer

the meanings of unknown words, knowledge sources were determined as a result of

readings and rereadings of the participants’ explanations of why they responded to a

specific target word in the way they did. The data were analyzed according to four main

knowledge sources, namely grammatical knowledge, morphological knowledge,

discourse knowledge and world knowledge. Table 6 below presents definitions of these

knowledge sources.

30

Table 6: Knowledge sources and their definitions (Nassaji, 2003:656)

Knowledge Source Definition

Grammatical Knowledge Using knowledge of grammatical functions or

syntactic categories, such as verbs, adjectives, or

adverb.

Morphological Knowledge Using knowledge of word formation and word

structure, including word derivations, inflections

word stems, suffixes, and prefixes.

Discourse Knowledge Using knowledge about the relation between or

within sentences and the devices that make

connections between the different parts of the

text.

World Knowledge Using knowledge of the content or the topic that

goes beyond what is in the text.

Deep analysis of the participants’ explanations regarding how they guessed the

meanings of the target words revealed that they did not resort to knowledge sources

frequently and in a widespread manner. The low-advanced group reported using

knowledge sources a total of 118 times. Of these 118 times, the most frequently referred

knowledge sources was discourse knowledge with 73 times (62%). It was followed by

grammatical knowledge with 33 times (28%), morphological knowledge with 7 times

(6%) and world knowledge with only 5 times (4%). Most of the participants in this

group reported that the general mode of the text, positive versus negative, helped them

have an idea regarding the meanings of the unknown words. Additionally, two

participants (participants 10 and 14) made note of association for the same target words,

contract. One participant (participant 14) stated that the target word affluence might be

related to the already known word influence, which indicates that phonological

similarities may negatively influence some learners. One another participant (participant

31

13) reported that collocations helped him guess the meaning of an unknown word,

sanative effect. The same participant also noted the aid of prepositions stating that he

associated imbued with with filled with. Below are some samples from the participants’

reports:

Sewerage: It must be garbage or a place where dirty water goes. (The participant

used the exact Turkish equivalent of the word here.) I think so because these two friends

catch illness because of environmental conditions. (Participant 10)

Squalor: It might be poverty or draught because according to the sentence (People

are killed by the conditions they live under, the lack of food and money, and the

squalor) lack of food and lack of money are mentioned, so the third reason why they are

killed might be lack of water or more generally poverty. (Participant 7)

First of all, we can understand that it is a noun because the article “the” comes

before it. Second, this word might mean “lack of water” because the sentences is about

deficiencies and lack of food and money are already mentioned, so the other one must

be water. (Participant 13)

Waver: I think this word means something like “change” because she first says that

she believes money should be spent on bringing health to all people of the world and

not on expensive doctors and hospitals for the few who can pay, but they go to a private

hospital. Therefore, we can understand that their beliefs change. (Participant 9)

Affluence: I guess it means “wealth”. It must be related to the word “rich” used in

the same sentence, and there are not any contrasting connectors. (Participant 13)

Unfathomable: I know that -able is an adjective-making suffix and –un is a negative

prefix. So this word must be a negative adjective, and it comes after mysterious. They

must have similar meanings. I guess this word means unknown, unclear, etc.

(Participant 13)

32

Peril: As far as I understand, this word is a noun and it is something that causes

diseases. In the same sentence, we see “in the natural conditions”, so this word might

mean dangerous parasites or bacteria. (Participant 14)

Low-intermediate group, on the other hand, used knowledge sources much less with

a total of 66 times. Of these 66 times, the most frequently referred knowledge source

was discourse knowledge with 39 times (59%). It was followed by grammatical

knowledge with 23 times (35%) and world knowledge with 4 times (6%). In this sense,

frequency order of the knowledge sources was the same for the two groups. However,

the low-intermediate group showed no indication of morphological knowledge.

Moreover, they were not as successful as the low-advanced group. Below are some

samples from the participants’ reports:

Affluence: I guess this word means something like “disease” because of the

sentence “In the rich world many diseases are caused by affluence.” (Participant 14)

Waver: Once I watched a movie whose name was Wave. I know what “wave” means

(The participant used the exact Turkish equivalent of the word here.) And I know –er

suffix, so I guess “waver” comes from” wave”. (Participant 17)

Sewerage: The two women in the text caught an illness in Africa. I know that Africa

is dirty, so this word might be something like “garbage”. (Participant 23)

4. Discussion

The present study was conducted to find out inferential success and use of

knowledge sources among Turkish EFL learners who were attending an English

preparatory school during the administration of the study. Two different reading

proficiency groups, namely low-intermediate and low-advanced learners, were included

in this study so as to find out the effect of L2 reading proficiency on lexical inferencing

success. For this purpose, a TOEFL reading subtest and lexical inferencing test were

33

employed as the testing instruments. The participants were asked to guess the meanings

of ten novel words embedded in context, and write down how they guessed their

meanings. They were allowed to use L1 (Turkish) during the lexical inferencing text.

Regarding the first research question, concerned with the inferential success among the

participants and its relation to L2 reading proficiency, it was found that the participants

of this study were not much successful in inferring the meanings of unknown words

from context. In addition to this, it was also found that the more proficient learners were

relatively more successful in lexical inferencing than the less proficient ones.

Furthermore, a significant high positive correlation was found between lexical

inferencing success and L2 reading proficiency, indicating that L2 reading proficiency

has a crucial impact on inferential success. It is necessary to discuss why low-

intermediate learners did not attempt to guess the meanings of the unknown words

although the text was comprehensible enough and almost all the other vocabulary items

were familiar to them (see text statistics and readability indices above). It is worth

mentioning that some participants from the low-intermediate group noted that they were

not able to guess the meanings of the unknown words because their English proficiency

was low. Some others reported that their vocabulary knowledge is very limited and thus

they cannot guess the meanings of the unknown words. The reason might be learned

carelessness. Learners know that their L2 proficiency is low and learning a new

language is tough and challenging. Therefore, they do not bother to make much effort.

Another potential reason is that learners are not used to guessing meaning from context.

Instead, they are tend to look up their dictionaries for every single word whose meaning

they do not know. What is worse, they just prefer to ask their teachers the meanings of

the unknown words. The latter (reason) might explain the relatively higher, but not high

enough lexical inferencing success among low-advanced learners as well.

34

That the participants misused the contextual clues in some cases also supports that

the overall inferential success is low and that they are not much used to lexical

inferencing. To illustrate, most of the participants thought that “sanative effect” means

“side effect”. However, a careful examination of context reveals that “sanative” has a

positive meaning and is similar to curative. Another example is that some participants

indicated that “imbue” has a negative meaning presuming that –im is a negative prefix.

Surprisingly, a lot of participants, even some from the low-advanced group, wrote down

the noun definition of the word “contract” (a legal document that states and explains a

formal agreement between two different people or groups, or the agreement itself,

Cambridge Dictionaries Online) ignoring that it was a verb in the lexical inferencing

text.

When it comes to the second research question, concerned with the use of knowledge

sources among the participants, it was found that they do not use a wide range of

knowledge sources to guess the meanings of unknown words. This may also be

attributed to Turkish EFL learners’ lack of knowledge and actual practice of lexical

inferencing. Apparently, they do not know what enables them to gain insights into the

meanings of a novel word. The findings also revealed that discourse knowledge was by

far the most frequently used knowledge source among not only low-advanced learners

but also low-intermediate learners. This indicates that Turkish EFL learners depend on

knowledge of cohesive devices to link the words in the texts. They also made frequent

use of grammatical knowledge to infer the meanings of the unknown words, which

indicates that Turkish EFL learners adhere to language structure and linguistic

knowledge. While the low-advanced group underused the morphological knowledge as

a knowledge source in lexical inferencing, the low-intermediate group did not refer to it

at all. This might be an indication of morphological unawareness among the

35

participants. Finally, world knowledge is the least frequently used knowledge source by

both of the groups. This finding shows us that the participants in this study are not able

to associate their daily experience with the language they are learning. This might be

because they have not made the target language an integral part of their life. The overall

findings require an explicit instruction of lexical inferencing and knowledge sources,

which will be touched upon in implications section below.

The findings of the present study are partially in line with previous research. First of

all, when it comes to that EFL learners are generally not very successful in inferring the

meanings of unknown words from context, the present study is congruent with most of

the previous research (e.g. Nassaji, 2003; Akkan, 2008; İstifçi, 2009). Concerning the

comparison between two varying reading proficiency groups, on the other hand, the

findings of the present study are partially congruent with İstifçi (2009) and Hayati

(2011), who found that lower proficiency learners made more inferences, whereas

higher proficiency learners made more accurate guesses. The findings of this study,

however, reveal that higher proficiency learners (low-advanced) make both more

inferences and more accurate guesses than lower proficiency learners (low-

intermediate). As for the knowledge sources, the present study displays that Turkish

EFL learners did not resort to them frequently and in a widespread manner unlike

Akkan (2008), who reported that Turkish EFL learners use a variety of knowledge

sources to infer the meanings of unknown words from context. The present study also

found that discourse knowledge is the most frequently used category by EFL learners,

which is in line with İstifçi (2009). When it comes to the second most frequently used

knowledge source, however, the two studies (the present one and İstifçi, 2009) clash. In

contrast to İstifçi (2009) study, which found that Turkish EFL learners employed world

knowledge very frequently, the present study found that the second most frequently

36

used knowledge source was grammatical knowledge, while world knowledge was the

last of the four knowledge sources (discourse knowledge > grammatical knowledge >

morphological knowledge > world knowledge). The findings regarding the most

frequent knowledge sources are not in line with Nassaji (2003), who found that world

knowledge was the most frequently used knowledge sources by (Iranian) EFL learners,

either.

5. Classroom Implications

It goes without saying that vocabulary knowledge is crucially important when one

attempts to learn a foreign language because language is undeniably composed of

mainly words. Just as it –vocabulary knowledge-, with as much quality and quantity as

possible, enables one to survive in the foreign language, its inadequacy, in the sense of

both quality and quantity, leads one to have difficulty in comprehending and producing

the language. For this very reason, unknown words in a reading text may prevent

foreign language learners from making the most of it. What is worse, they are likely to

intimidate and demotivate learners. Therefore, estimating how learners respond to these

unknown words and finding out if they can successfully deal with them are essential in

order to take necessary precautions. The present study and previous research lay bare

that ESL/EFL learners are not as successful as required in dealing with unknown words

while reading. Therefore, there is some advice worth following. First, explicit

instruction in detecting, using and combining available knowledge sources to have

successful inferences is apparently essential. Second, with regard to morphological

knowledge, one of the knowledge sources in lexical inferencing, it is required to put

some instructional emphasis on acquisition of the meanings of the most productive and

high-frequency affixes as well as the most frequent words of English, and the process of

synthesizing individual word parts into a coherent and accurate meaning for the whole

37

word, with the aid of the information in the surrounding context. In other words,

learners should be encouraged to be aware of English affixes and some common words

so that they can solve the meanings of unknown words while reading. Third, learners

should be imbued with grammatical knowledge, such as knowledge of parts of speech,

and the significance of such knowledge to be able to make successful inferences

depending on the function of an unknown word in the context. Forth, some classroom

practice is needed to let learners familiarize with guessing meaning from context. For

example, learners can occasionally be presented some comprehensible reading texts in

which unknown words, composed of high-frequency affixes and low-frequency roots,

are embedded, and be asked to guess their meanings. Additionally, they can be asked to

verbalize the knowledge sources they employed. Moreover, in the normal course of

reading classes, learners should be encouraged to read texts without looking up their

dictionaries for every single unknown word. They should be supported to guess their

meanings using contextual clues instead. Lastly, considering the reciprocal relationship

between reading proficiency and lexical inferencing success, learners should be

encouraged to read extensively.

6. Limitations and Further Research

The present study modestly attempts to provide some insights into how Turkish EFL

learners attending preparatory English classes respond to unknown words while

reading: whether they are successful in lexical inferencing, to what extent they are

successful in so doing, whether reading proficiency has a significant impact on this

success or failure, what knowledge sources they make use of, and whether they can

make profitable use of these knowledge sources. In these respects and in terms of the

pedagogical implications that the present one and similar studies have provided, it might

be considered significant. However, it is not free from limitations. First of all, so as to

38

come up with more robust and thus generalizable findings, the sample size could have

been larger. However, in the sense that this is convenience sampling, this limitation is

seemingly justifiable. Another limitation of the present study is with regard to the data

collection procedure. As has been popular recently, think-aloud protocols could have

been utilized for the accomplishment of the present study following many a researcher

with similar interests. Thereby, both introspection and retrospection techniques might

have been employed. However, the participants were asked to write their guesses along

with what helped them in their guesses instead. It was because the researcher was not

teaching all of the participants during the implementation of the study, and thus it was

difficult to reach each participant, even if the sample size had been smaller, and find

time and location to individually administer the lexical inferencing test to them through

think-aloud protocols.

Considering the aforementioned limitations, a similar study might be conducted with

a larger sample size. Alternatively, a similar study might be carried out using think-

aloud protocols. In addition to these, other factors that may affect learners’ inferencing

behavior and outcomes such as the availability of clear contextual cues might be

considered. Besides text and word characteristics, the task, learners’ previous L2

learning experience and L1 transfer might also be investigated (Nassaji, 2003).

Moreover, the relationship between morphological awareness and lexical inferencing

success might be explored as far as further research is concerned. Furthermore, learners

perceptions of their inferential success and opinions of their success or failure could

also be investigated.

7. Conclusion

The present study explored lexical inferencing success among low-intermediate and

low-advanced Turkish EFL learners who are attending an English preparatory school

39

and investigated the relationship between inferential success and L2 reading proficiency

among these learners. Additionally, it looked into the knowledge sources that learners

make use of in inferring the meanings of unknown words from context. Analysis

revealed that although low-advanced learners are relatively more successful than the

low-intermediate learners, inferential success among Turkish EFL learners attending an

English preparatory school is overall low. It was also found that Turkish EFL learners

are tend to make use of mainly discourse knowledge and grammatical knowledge

although they do not resort to knowledge sources frequently and in a widespread

manner. The findings were discussed considering the previous research and some

pedagogical implications were proposed. Regarding the pedagogical implications

proposed in this study, the main focus is on explicit instruction on lexical inferencing

strategies and enabling EFL learners to make profitable use of knowledge sources.

There were a few limitations of the study because of the convenience sampling.

Therefore, further study was also suggested considering the limitations and other further

steps to be taken. In this sense, it is hoped that the present study has been able to come

in useful for EFL learners and teachers in Turkey.

Notes

a: The participants in the pilot study were mainly at advanced level because they were

likely to know more words than the others. However, since many factors affect one’s

vocabulary knowledge, learners from lower proficiency levels were also administered

the pilot study.

b: The participants were instructed to complete the reading proficiency test (40

questions) in 45 minutes because the original test required the participants to complete

50 questions in 55 minutes.

40

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