A Study Of Predictive Inferences Of Chinese Efl Learners In Narrative Text Comprehension

The thesis presents a study of Chinese EFL learners'on-line predictive inferential processing as they comprehend a narrative text. The study takes the Chinese EFL learners of different English level as the research subjects and applies naming experiment and critical-line reading experiment to explore the effect of textual causal constraint and readers'L2/FL proficiency level on activating and encoding of the PIs in text comprehension. It is specifically designed to address the following three questions: 1) If the textual causal constrain is high, can Chinese EFL learners automatically activate PIs during English narrative text reading? 2) Can PIs be activated and encoded in L2/FL readers'short-term memory representation to some extent? 3) Do textual causal constraint and readers'English proficiency influence activating and encoding of PIs?The naming task was used in Experiment 1 to probe the on-line activation of PIs. The experimental materials were chosen from Klin & Murray's experimental items (1999). Each reading material had two versions: high causal constraint version and low causal constraint version. Participants were 24 English major students from College of Foreign Languages, NWNU. 12 sophomore students were middle-level English proficiency participants, and 12 graduate students were high-level English participants. The experimental results indicated that PIs were not automatically activated in the reading process of middle-level English proficiency readers, but automatically activated when the high-level English readers read the texts with sufficient causal constraint. The results demonstrated that the automatic activation of PIs in L2/FL text comprehension was not only dependent on the high or low degree of causal constraints, but also affected by L2/FL learners'language proficiency level.Critical-line reading time measure was used in experiment 2 to further examine the on-line activation of PIs and its encoding in L2/FL readers'short-time memory representation. Experimental materials were modified from the materials of Experiment 1. Participants were another 24 English major students from College of Foreign Languages, NWNU. The results demonstrated that readers'English proficiency level affected the on-line activation and encoding of PIs. When high-level English proficiency readers read the texts with high causal constraint, the PIs were not only activated but also encoded in short-term memory representation. But for middle-level English readers, there was no significant difference for the contradictory sentences in the two different textual conditions, suggesting that PIs were not on-line activated in the reading process.To synthesize the results of two experiments, the researcher drew the following conclusions. First, the textual causal constraint affects the on-line activation of PIs in L2/FL text reading process, and readers are more likely to make PIs when the textual causal constraint is high. Second, the activation of PIs is also affected by readers'language proficiency in L2/FL text reading process. Advanced English proficiency readers can on-line activate PIs, while middle-level readers can not. Third, for advanced English readers, PIs can be encoded in their short-term memory representation after its activation, but this encoding is only some partial encoding.The findings of the present study can not only help to unveil the nature and processing of PIs, but also contribute to further understanding of L2 text reading process, enriching and developing L2 reading theories. The results of this study also have some important implications for the practice of teaching and learning of reading.