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

• Shiva kaivanpanah ^[2] ; Niloofar Rahimi ^{[1] [2]}
  1. [1] University of Nottingham

     University of Nottingham

     Reino Unido

     
  2. [2] University of Tehran

     University of Tehran

     Irán

     
• Localización: Porta Linguarum: revista internacional de didáctica de las lenguas extranjeras, ISSN 1697-7467, Nº. 27, 2017, págs. 47-61
• Idioma: inglés
• DOI: 10.30827/digibug.53951
• Títulos paralelos:
  • El efecto de pistas contextuales y familiaridad de tema en la inferencia y la retenciónléxica del L2
• Enlaces
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• Dialnet Métricas: 1 Cita
• Resumen
  • español

    El presente estudio tiene como el objetivo estudiar el efecto de las pruebas contextualizadas así como los tópicos familiarizados en la inferencia del léxico de L2 y también su retención. Para este fin, fueron estudiados 67 estudiantes iraníes de Inglés, L2 (muestras adaptadas al contexto variando el grado de familiarización) y oraciones simples (muestras no adaptadas al contexto) incluyendo los léxicos 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 así como los tópicos 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.

  • English

    The 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.

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