A Study Of Chinese EFL Learners’ Lexical Inferencing Developmental Patterns In Reading Chinese And English

Lexical inferencing plays a crucial role in readers’ vocabulary knowledge development and discourse comprehension. However, few studies have been conducted on lexical inferencing developmental patterns from cross-linguistic perspectives. The current study employs think-aloud method to examine the developmental patterns of Chinese and English lexical inferencing for Chinese EFL learners of different language proficiency levels. The study is designed to address the following questions: 1) What patterns do knowledge sources(KSs) used in L1 and L2 lexical inferencing demonstrate for three groups of participants? 2) Are there any differences of lexical inferencing success for three groups of participants? 3) How is instant lexical knowledge retention after L2 inferencing for three groups of participants? 4) What is the relationship between participants’ receptive vocabulary knowledge, lexical inferencing success and lexical knowledge retention?In order to explore lexical inderencing developmental patterns in reading Chinese and English, the author employs think-aloud and retrospective methods to investigate Chinese and English lexical inferencing developmental patterns for high school students, undergraduates(data from previous study with same experimental materials) and postgraduates. The main findings are as follows: 1) Knowledge source types used by participants in Chinese and English lexical inferencing share similar patterns, but the relative frequency of each knowledge source varies. 2) Lexical inferencing success in Chinese is much higher than that in English, but English lexical inferencing success increases with the improvement of participants’ language proficiency. 3) Postgraduates’ instant lexical knowledge retention is better than undergraduates and high school students, but all groups have achieved word form familiarity for most target words. 4) Participants’ receptive vocabulary knowledge is correspondent with lexical inferencing success and vocabulary knowledge retention, but there is no significant correlation between lexical inferencing success and retention of new word meanings.The current study investigates lexical inferencing developmental patterns in reading Chinese and English from cross-linguistic perspectives for the first time. It is expected to contribute to cross-linguistic lexical inferencing studies and English, Chinese vocabulary teaching area both theoretically and pedagogically. Theoretically, the present study reveals the lexical inferencing developmental patterns of typologically distant languages Chinese and English. This makes contributions to the construction of lexical inferencing theory and developmental patterns. Pedagogically, the results of the study provide relevant empirical data for English vocabulary teaching and Chinese as a foreign language teaching, and further promote vocabulary teaching effect.