Effects of Prefix and Contextual Information on Japanese EFL Lexical Inferencing: A Think-Aloud Study

抄録

　　The present study investigated the effects of morphological and contextual clues and L2 reading proficiency on Japanese EFL learners’ lexical inferencing. Previous studies have revealed that lexical inferencing is conducted based on a combination of clues such as morphology, context, general knowledge, and so on. However, the interaction of these factors remains to be examined. In an experiment, 20 Japanese university students engaged in a lexical inferencing task consisting of 2 (prefix availability: +prefix/–prefix) × 2 (context: +informative/–informative) conditions and an L2 reading proficiency test. During this think-aloud study, L2 learners reported aloud what they were thinking as they inferred a word’s meaning. The results of statistical analyses indicate significant differences depending on prefix availability in the lexical inferencing task. Also, analyses of verbal protocols revealed that a lack of prefix availability in an unknown word prompted L2 learners to use different strategies such as repeating, using prior knowledge, and paraphrasing. Taken together, these results indicate that L2 learners with university-level L2 proficiency are sensitive to morphological clues in an unknown word and that these clues change their strategies for inferring a word’s meaning. After discussion of the results, implications of the study’s findings for the teaching of lexical inferencing are mentioned.