A Study Of The Effects Of Reader-based Factors On Chinese Students’ Lexical Inferencing

Inferencing is a crucial factor in the process of reading, which is also named as the core ofreading comprehension. Inferencing at the lexicon level is of great importance in thedevelopment of readers’ vocabulary and comprehension of thematic meaning, which has drawnmuch attention from researchers at home and abroad. Researchers have made substantialinvestigation into cognitive processing mechanism of lexical inferencing during L1and L2discourse reading and yielded significant results.L1and L2used in abroad research are both Indo-European alphabetic languages, whilestudies on English learners whose mother tongue is Chinese are scarce. In addition, few studiesat home have systematically examined the impact of reader-based factors on lexical inferencing.Consequently, the present study employs the empirical research method to explore the effects ofL2reading proficiency, topic familiarity and passage sight vocabulary on lexical inferencing ofL2learners in China. To put it more specifically, this study is designed to answer the followingfour questions:1) what effects does L2reading proficiency have on L2lexical inferencingthrough passage reading;2) What effects does topic familiarity have on L2lexical inferencingthrough passage reading;3) Whether passage sight vocabulary influences L2lexical inferencingthrough passage reading;4) Knowledge sources used in the process of lexical inferencing andfrequencies of use of these knowledge sources.In order to answer the above four questions and reveal mental models involved in readers’lexical inferencing, the author designed English lexical inferencing tasks. Real-timequestionnaire was used in the experiment to collect the data. Instruments of L2ReadingComprehension Test, a5-point Topic Familiarity Scale and Passage Sight Vocabulary Test areemployed to measure these reader-based factors, with SPSS17.0as the analytical tool.213participants in this study were university non-English majors who learnt English as their secondlanguage. The results of the experiment are as follows:1) there is significant correlationbetween L2reading proficiency and lexical inferencing success. Higher L2reading proficiencylearners are more likely to reach inferencing success;2）Topic familiarity has a significantly positive effect on lexical inferring. Reading passages with familiar topics will enhance lexicalinferencing;3) As for the variable of passage sight vocabulary, the rich indeed got higherinference scores, revealing that it has significant correlation with lexical inferencing;4）participants use multiple knowledge sources in lexical inferencing, ranging from linguistic tonon-linguistic. Of all these sources, linguistic sources are more frequently used thannon-linguistic sources; sentence level sources are most frequently used, followed by word levelsources and discourse level ones.The results of the study are hoped to contribute to L2lexical teaching and reading teachingof Chinese students. Theoretically, the research discloses the reader-based factors affecting thesuccess of lexical inferencing and the knowledge sources used in the process of inferencing,which can help to build up a more comprehensive lexical inferencing model. Pedagogically，thefindings of the study will be beneficial to the learning and teaching of L2vocabulary. Teachersshould help students employ effective lexical inferring strategies during reading, which canexpand their vocabulary, increase their reading speed and efficiency, promote their lexicalinferencing ability and reading skills, and finally improve their discourse reading ability.