Research On Difference Of Lexical Inferencing Process Between Non-native And Native Chinese Speakers

Previous research on lexical inference has generated fruitful results and insights inmany different ways. The methods range, not only are insights gained in terms ofsuccess rate, influencing variables, knowledge sources and strategies used, butretention after a delayed time, and practicability of related strategy instruction.However, the results of these studies are mostly illustrated in a quantitative way, thatis, without description of concrete process, such as inferencing details, procedures,sequences, etc., which if investigated and understood, will surely enhance ourunderstanding concerning lexical inference.This experiment was designed to explore the concrete lexical inferencing process ofboth non-native and native Chinese speakers using authentic materials. Theparticipants were required to think aloud during the inferencing process. After oneweek, the retention of the meanings acquired during the main experiment wasmeasured using paper-pencil test. This study discriminates two levels of lexicalinference, namely micro-inference and macro-inference, and aims to investigate thedifference between implicit and explicit inference, inferencing procedure, knowledgesources and strategies resorted to and the relevant sequences, the effect of exposurefrequency on the results of explicit inference, and the retention of word meaningsafter one week.It concludes that:(1) Explicit inference facilitates the derivation of word meanings significantly bothfor non-native and native speakers; implicit inference facilitates that of nativespeakers significantly, but for non-native speakers, the positive effect is almostneglectable.(2) Lexical inferencing procedure normally consists of four steps: constructing,verifying, evaluating, acquisition. (3) Seven kinds of knowledge sources were observed: context, morphologicalknowledge, cognate associations, word associations, grammatical relations and wordknowledge. Among them context is the most important and frequently used one, thedegree of the correctness of meanings inferred fundamentally depends on theirsuitability for relevant contexts. Different kinds of knowledge sources tend to functionin different stages of macro-inference.(4) Four kinds of strategies were distinguished: appeal to knowledge sources,repeating, substituting, and simplifying sentence. They also tend to function indifferent stages of macro-inference.(5) Exposure frequency in explicit inference has a significant positive correlationwith the scores of word meanings given by both non-native and native speakers andthe two corresponding patterns of progress don’t show obvious difference.(6) The retention test revealed that after one week, the amount of word meaningderived in the main experiment still maintained, suggesting that those derivedmeanings had been acquired.(7) No matter it is before implicit inference or after any time of micro-inference,the scores of meanings given by non-native speakers are always much lower thannative speakers, which may indicate that even when the non-native speakers’ languagelevel have reached the stage of using target language to pursue a Master’s degree,there may still be a large gap of vocabulary size between them, and one time ofimplicit inference plus six times of explicit inference is unable to narrow the languagelevel gap.