| This study investigated the lexical inferencing made by Libyan EFL medical students at a Libyan university when they encountered unfamiliar words in English texts. The researcher examined the effect of learners' level of reading competence on their lexical inferencing with respect to the knowledge sources and types of contextual cues they used in the process, their rate of success in inferring the correct meanings of the target words, and their rate of vocabulary learning and retention of previously unknown words. The study also examined the effect of learners' knowledge of the Arabic language on their inferencing.;Based on the results of a reading comprehension proficiency test (CanTEST), 20 students, 10 from each of two distinct levels of reading ability (i.e., intermediate and advanced) were randomly selected for the study. Two pretests were used: Nation's (1990) Vocabulary Levels Test to assess the students' size of vocabulary; and, the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS) (Paribakht & Wesche, 1993, 1997; Wesche & Paribakht, 1996), to measure their level of knowledge of the target words. Think-aloud procedures were used during the individual interview sessions. At the end of the interviews, retrospective protocols were collected from the participants about their experiences. These sessions were tape-recorded. The learners were given the VKS again at this point to measure word learning. Two weeks after the individual interview sessions, a post-test (VKS) was administered again to assess learners' rate of retention of the previously unfamiliar target words.;Results revealed that both proficiency groups used similar types of knowledge sources and contextual cues when inferencing, but in different proportions. Sentence level meaning and discourse level meaning were the types most frequently used by both groups. A taxonomy of knowledge sources and contextual cues used by the learners in inferencing was developed. Results indicate successful learning of some of the previously unfamiliar target words and retention of some new lexical knowledge. L1 influence is apparent at multiple levels of the language system (e.g., interpretation of semantic cues, lexical knowledge and collocations), sometimes misleading the reader and other times facilitating successful inferencing. Pedagogical implications of the findings of the study and suggestions for further research are presented. |
