Lexical inferencing and the mutual intelligibility of Estonian and Finnish

Abstract

Several factors affect the comprehension of a text written in a language related to the reader's first language (L1): (i) orthographic similarity with the reader's L1, (ii) contextual clues, (iii) semantic relationships between components of phraseological units, and (iv) L1 reading comprehension strategies. This article compares the results of a cloze test (CT), in which a group of Finns read a text in their L1 (Finnish) and filled the gaps, and a translation test (TT), in which another group of Finns translated the Estonian version of the same text into Finnish. This text included five pairs of primes and targets, parts of the same phraseological unit, representing different semantic relations; in the CT the target was replaced by a gap and in the TT the respondents had to translate the target. The results indicated that the respondents used similar inferencing strategies in both tests, and thus provide evidence for the assumption that orthographic similarity is not the sole factor contributing to understanding a foreign text, but that L1 reading comprehension strategies are also employed.

The Effect of Lexical Inference Strategy Instruction on Saudi EFL learners’ Reading Comprehension

“…While lexical acquisition is an essential prerequisite to communication, it is often regarded as an 'agony' for L2 learners (Muikku-Werner, 2017). Saudi EFL learners are no exception of such an agony that can be partially relieved by lexical inferencing.…”

“…Due to the vital role of the lexical inferencing strategies in helping LS and EFL learners in making acceptable guessing from texts and utilizing lexical inferencing strategies that help them understand materials written in English in their majors, many researches in recent years have investigated the topic of the effect of the lexical inferencing strategy instruction on EFL readers (Bengeleil & Paribakht, 2004;Nakagawa, 2006;Tavakoli & Hayati, 2011;Kaivanpanah & Moghaddam, 2012;Hu & Nassaji, 2014;Safa & Kokabi, 2017;Muikku-Werner, 2017, Buslon & Alieto, 2019. Such researches indicate the positive effect of the lexical inference strategies on reading comprehension and problems in inferring the meanings of vocabulary from context.…”