Incorrect inferences and contextual word learning in English as a second language

Abstract

Elgort, I. (2017). Incorrect inferences and contextual word learning in English as a second language. Journal of the European Second Language Association, 1(1), 1-11, DOI: https://doi.org/10.22599/jesla.3 RESEARCH Incorrect inferences and contextual word learning in English as a second language Irina ElgortWhen readers encounter new words they may try to infer their meanings from context. Such contextual inferences may be correct or incorrect. This research considered the effect of incorrect meaning inferences on contextual word learning in English as a second language. Chinese speakers encountered 48 novel vocabulary items in informative single-sentence English contexts and were instructed to infer their meanings. They were able to verify their inferences by reviewing dictionary-type definitions at the end of the learning procedure. Participants' explicit knowledge of the critical vocabulary items was probed using a meaning generation task; their implicit knowledge was examined using a mixed-modality masked repetition priming lexical decision task. The results revealed a differential effect of incorrect inferences on the explicit and implicit knowledge of the vocabulary items. Explicit knowledge of meaning was less accurate after incorrect inferences than after correct inferences, but it was not worse than the knowledge gained when no explicit inference had been made. Implicit knowledge however was not affected by incorrect inferences. Pedagogical and research implications of the study findings are considered.Keywords: Contextual word learning; Vocabulary; Meaning inferences; Implicit knowledge 1. Introduction Inferring word meanings from context in a second languageRecently I interviewed fifty Chinese university students studying in an English-speaking country about their attitudes toward guessing word meanings from context when reading in English, their second language (L2). A common concern about this approach to learning new words expressed in these interviews was, 'What if I guess incorrectly?' Indeed, researchers have found that L2 readers make incorrect inferences about word meanings during reading (Bensoussan & Laufer, 1984;Frantzen, 2003;Kelly, 1990;Laufer, 1997;Mondria, 2003; Schoutenvan Parreren, 1992). Incorrect inferences may arise when the context in which an unfamiliar word occurs provides insufficient support for inferring the meaning (is lowconstraining, vague or ambiguous). Another reason for incorrect inferences is text difficulty for an individual reader; Hu and Nation (2000) found that about 98% of the running words in a text need to be known in order to achieve the level of understanding that supports the learning of new L2 words. Therefore, the same text may serve as informative context for one reader, but not another. Incorrect inferences may also arise when an unfamiliar L2 word is mistakenly identified as familiar (Laufer, 1997) or when a guess is made on the basis of form similarity to another word, unrelated in meaning, without adequate attention to context (Frantzen, 2003).The rela...

Weighing Up Exercises on Phrasal Verbs: Retrieval Versus Trial‐and‐Error Practices

“…Moreover, when students share the same L1, individual differences possibly play a part so that some learners may be more susceptible than others to side effects of trial‐and‐error procedures. For example, in a study where L2 English learners were asked to infer the meanings of new words from short contexts before these meanings were presented to them, Elgort () found a negative effect of incorrect inferences on subsequent meaning recall, especially for participants whose proficiency was comparatively low. Although such an interaction with proficiency level was not attested in our experiment (possibly because the participant group was quite homogenous in that respect), the roles of proficiency and of learner traits more generally merit further investigation as part of this line of inquiry.…”

Contextual Word Learning in the First and Second Language

“…Initial evidence regarding the effect of inference accuracy on the development of declarative and nondeclarative word knowledge in reading was reported by Elgort (2017). In this study, Chinese learners of English encountered novel L2 words three times in supportive sentence contexts.…”

“…Although an assumption that this may interfere with learning seems logical, the effect of erroneous inferences on CWL is not particularly well understood. There is evidence that uncorrected incorrect meaning inferences during reading negatively affect the development of declarative word knowledge (Carpenter, Sachs, Martin, Schmidt, & Looft, 2012; Hulstijn, 1992) but there are very few studies that have investigated whether explicit erroneous inferences affect the development of nondeclarative knowledge (Elgort, 2017; Rodríguez-Fornells et al, 2004) and, to the best of our knowledge, no CWL studies systematically manipulated errorless and trial-and-error learning treatments with and without feedback.…”

“…The use of longer contexts may offer further insights into the effect of inference errors on the development of declarative and nondeclarative knowledge. Secondly, Elgort (2017) investigated the effect of errors in L2, but not L1 reading. Finally, the researcher did not deliberately manipulate errorless versus trial-and-error treatments; item definitions always followed contextual meaning inferences, that is, the effect of errors was investigated only in the trial-and-error mode followed by feedback.…”

Lexical Inferencing in Newspaper Columns: An Introspective Study

“…It is considered the primary activity through which lexical development occurs in the second or the forging language (Deschambault, 2012). The learners use different knowledge sources to infer meaning for unknown words they encounter in a text (Bengleil & Paribakht, 2004;Elgort, 2017;Haastrup, 1989Haastrup, , 1991Jelic, 2007;Naasaji, 2003Naasaji, , 2004Qian, 2005;Wesche & Paribakht, 2010). Bensoussan and Laufer (1984) have explored the extent to which context helps lexical inferencing, word guessability and the level of the students.…”