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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 21, No. 0, pp.1027-1044
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 31 Jan 2021
Received 17 Sep 2021 Revised 16 Oct 2021 Accepted 27 Oct 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.21..202110.1027

Instruction of Meaning Inference Strategies and Its Relation to Learners’ Proficiency Levels

Chaehee Park
Professor, Division of Foreign Languages, Sun Moon University, Tel: 041-530-2423 chpark@sunmoon.ac.kr


© 2021 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Lexical inference strategies play an important role in vocabulary learning, but it is still unknown whether the effectiveness of inference strategies is related to learners’ proficiency levels. In this study, it is investigated how an explicit instruction of word-meaning inference strategies contributes to the success of meaning inference. Seventy-five Korean EFL university students participated in the task experiments (36 for the experiment with treatment of inference strategies instruction, 39 for the control with no treatment). Two reading texts materials containing 10 nonwords each were created. The participants’ meaning inference accuracy rate was tested two times (pretest and posttest after treatment). It was found that the experiment group was significantly more advanced than the control group in meaning inference and only the low-level students of the experiment showed a meaningful increase in meaning inference accuracy. The results indicated that the explicit instruction of word-meaning inference strategies was conducive to successful inference of unknown vocabulary, particularly in low-level students. Pedagogical implications regarding the instruction of word-meaning inference strategies in relation to learners’ proficiency levels were discussed.

Keywords:

meaning inference strategies, knowledge sources, vocabulary learning instruction, second language acquisition, inference success

Acknowledgments

Partial data were presented at the conference of The Association of English Language and Literature in Korea in June 2021.

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