Published Online:December 2024
Product Name:The IUP Journal of International Relations
Product Type:Article
Product Code:IJES161224
Author Name:Sasmita Kanungo
Availability:YES
Subject/Domain:Arts and Humanities
Download Format:PDF
Pages:187- 197
While reading an L2 text, learners may come across difficult words. In this context, limited vocabulary knowledge hinders their reading comprehension. Furthermore, when faced with difficult words, L2 learners have multiple options to get the meaning: looking them up in a dictionary, checking online, ignoring the word and continuing reading, seeking assistance from others or inferring the meaning from the context or information available. This process of inferring meaning of difficult words while reading a text is known as “lexical inferencing.” It is important to understand the sources learners use to infer the meaning of difficult words. This study seeks to identify and categorize the sources used by selected Odia L2 learners based on their word knowledge, and statistically analyze the usage of these sources by the participants. Forty intermediate Odia ESL learners from different colleges in Odisha were selected for the study, and were grouped into English medium and Odia medium. They were asked to read and infer the meaning of 53 difficult words placed in five texts by employing think-aloud procedure. The results reveal no significant difference between the two groups in using word-based knowledge sources (WBKS) for lexical inferencing.
The process of inferring meaning of difficult words in a text while reading is termed as “lexical inferencing”. The word ‘inferencing’ comes from the verb ‘to infer’, which, according to the 1977 version of Webster’s New World Dictionary, means to conclude by reasoning from something known or assumed (as cited in Kuen 2004, 11).