Word-meaning inference in L2 Chinese: an interactive effect of learners’ linguistic knowledge and words’ semantic transparency

Chen, Tianxu; Koda, Keiko; Wiener, Seth

doi:10.1007/s11145-020-10058-w

Cited by 9 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Theoretically, the possible moderating effect of L2 proficiency in the present study is similar to the recent oft-cited concept of "L2 linguistic threshold" that emphasizes how language proficiency of L2 learners can constrain the application of other reading abilities or subskills: without sufficient "basic" knowledge, L2 learners cannot acquire benefits from certain subskills/abilities (e.g., morphological awareness and working memory) during reading comprehension and its proxy-lexical inference (e.g., Chen, 2018;Chen et al, 2020;Joh & Plakans, 2017;Koda & Miller, 2018). In other words, L2 learners' reading proficiency can modulate the involvement of subskills (in the present study's case, different aspects of vocabulary knowledge) in L2 reading comprehension.…”

Section: Reading Proficiency As a Moderatorsupporting

confidence: 82%

Different aspects of vocabulary depth knowledge in L2 Chinese reading comprehension: Comparing higher‐ and lower‐proficiency readers

Chen

Zhang

2023

Foreign Language Annals

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Grammatical and vocabulary knowledge (i.e., breadth and depth) are widely acknowledged as key predictors of reading comprehension in a second language (L2). However, it remains unclear how different aspects of vocabulary depth may independently contribute to L2 reading comprehension and how learners' proficiency may moderate the relative contributions of vocabulary knowledge. Based on the Lexical Quality Hypothesis and the Reading Systems Framework, this study investigated 238 L2 Chinese learners who were college‐level students in China, using a set of reading‐related tasks. The results showed that (1) vocabulary breadth and grammatical knowledge independently contributed to L2 reading comprehension with grammatical knowledge being a more deciding factor; (2) different aspects of vocabulary depth (i.e., polysemy and synonymy), over and above vocabulary breadth and grammatical knowledge, played an independent role; and (3) more importantly, lower‐proficiency learners relied more on vocabulary breadth whereas higher‐proficiency learners made more use of vocabulary depth during text‐level comprehension.

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Section: Reading Proficiency As a Moderatorsupporting

confidence: 82%

Different aspects of vocabulary depth knowledge in L2 Chinese reading comprehension: Comparing higher‐ and lower‐proficiency readers

Chen

Zhang

2023

Foreign Language Annals

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“… Koda and Miller (2018) indicated that readers developed an abstract but sharable awareness of linguistic structure through their cumulative experience in their L1 and exposure to L1 text, which could be utilized in their later-acquired languages. In addition, working memory capacity (e.g., Daneman and Carpenter, 1980 ; Singer and Ritchot, 1996 ; Schmalhofer et al, 2002 ; Cain et al, 2004 ; Calvo, 2005 ; Monetta et al, 2008 ; Currie and Muijselaar, 2019 ; Kim et al, 2022 ), contextual constraints (e.g., Gaskell and Marslen-Wilson, 1996 , 1998 ; Tang and Chan, 2022 ; Zhang et al, 2022 ), and vocabulary transparency (e.g., Pulido, 2007 ; Chen, 2019 ; Chen et al, 2020 ; Tang and Chan, 2022 ) are crucial indicators of lexical inferencing success in language comprehension.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Knowledge mapping of the research on lexical inferencing: A bibliometric analysis

2023

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Lexical inferencing functions as one of the most important and effective skills used in language comprehension pertaining to psychological, cognitive and neurological aspects. Given its complex nature and crucial role in language comprehension, lexical inferencing has received considerable attention. The present study visualized the knowledge domain of the research on lexical inferencing based on a total of 472 articles collected from Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection of Thomson Reuters from 2001 to 2021. The bibliographic data were analyzed through co-cited articles, co-citation clusters of references, and co-occurring keywords to identify holistic intellectual landscape of lexical inferencing with special focus on its intellectual structure and base, and hot research topics. The main intellectual base includes probability of activating lexical inferencing in working memory and encoding in long-term memory, the role of lexical inferencing in reading comprehension, in connected speech, in children’s derivation under pragmatic context, and in psychological and neurocognitive processes underlying language processing mechanism. Hot topics are comprised the impacts of lexical inferencing on language acquisition and comprehension (written and spoken language comprehension), the factors (context variables, vocabulary knowledge, and morphological awareness) affecting the presence and efficacy of lexical inferencing, and the time course of lexical inferencing during reading. Critically, the results of this study demonstrated that the contribution of lexical inferencing to language comprehension was strongly correlated with learner-related and discourse-related variables. The study shed valuable light on the understanding of the intellectual background and the dynamic patterns of lexical inferencing over the past two decades, thereby future work in lexical inferencing is suggested as well.

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“…The logographical characters are used as morphemes or words, whereas the syllabic characters are used as syllables or words (e.g., Muljani et al, 1998;Akamatsu, 2002). A previous study reported that morphemes, vocabulary, and grammatical knowledge contribute to the word and meaning inference in L2 Chinese (Chen et al, 2020). L2 vocabulary knowledge also predicted L2 reading comprehension (Prior et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pictorial Referents Facilitate Recognition and Retrieval Speeds of Associations Between Novel Words in a Second Language (L2) and Referents

et al. 2021

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This study reveals associative processes for novel words in a second language (L2) and their referents. Thirty Japanese participants learned associative pairs for novel words in Chinese and pictorial referents (CP), as well as novel words in Chinese and words in Japanese (CJ), against a condition in which they learned only novel words in Chinese (C). After the learning phase, participants conducted two learning condition retrieval tasks for word recognition and three recognition tasks for the source-monitoring of the referents. The correct answers for each recognition task were provided to participants after each trial. Although the correct answers in all conditions increased in both the recognition and learning condition retrieval tasks, there was no significant difference among conditions. In contrast, the response times of the correct trials in all recognition tasks and the first learning condition retrieval tasks were faster for the CP condition than the CJ condition. Additionally, in the second learning condition retrieval task, missed items in associative conditions (CP and CJ conditions) were judged to be learned items more often than unlearned items, whereas missed items in the non-associative condition (C condition) were judged to be unlearned items more than learned items. These findings suggest that pictures contribute to the recognition and retrieval speeds of associations between novel words in L2 and referents, and that associative learning of L2 words and referents could enhance more familiarity effects than the learning of L2 words only.

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Word-meaning inference in L2 Chinese: an interactive effect of learners’ linguistic knowledge and words’ semantic transparency

Cited by 9 publications

References 39 publications

Different aspects of vocabulary depth knowledge in L2 Chinese reading comprehension: Comparing higher‐ and lower‐proficiency readers

Different aspects of vocabulary depth knowledge in L2 Chinese reading comprehension: Comparing higher‐ and lower‐proficiency readers

Knowledge mapping of the research on lexical inferencing: A bibliometric analysis

Pictorial Referents Facilitate Recognition and Retrieval Speeds of Associations Between Novel Words in a Second Language (L2) and Referents

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