1. Vocabulary teaching 7 ‘Inferencing’

2. Laufer, B. (1997). The lexical plight in second language reading: Words you don't know, words you think you know, and words you can't guess. In Coady, J. & T. Huckin (Eds.), Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition (pp.20-34). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Words you don’t know Automatic recognition frees up resources Understanding the structure of a text is useless without knowledge of vocabulary. Experiments showed that turning point round about 3,000 word families. This provides something between 90 and 95% of a text. (But more recent assessments say you need more).

3. Words you think you know Deceptive transparency e.g. infallible meaning can’t fall, or shortcomings meaning brief visits? Misunderstood morphological structure: outline = out of the line, nevertheless = never less, discourse = without direction. Literal interpretation of figurative language e.g. sit on the fence – interpreted literally. False friends e.g. sympathetic, tramp, novel. Polysemes given wrong meaning, e.g. since, state, abstract. Synforms confused: cute/acute, economic/economical, industrious/industrial, reduce/deduce/induce

4. When a learner doesn’t know a word they can a) ignore it, b) look it up, c) ask someone d) try to guess it. But can only do the last three if they know they don’t know it.

5. Words you can’t guess Non-existent contextual clues Bensoussan and Laufer found that in standard passage only 13 out of 70 new words could be guessed. Unusable contextual clues Because the words are themselves unknown, or misinterpreted. ‘This nurturing behaviour, this fending for females instead of leaving them to fend for themselves,may take many different forms.’ Clues misleading or ambiguous ‘Typhoon Vera killed or injured 28 people and crippled the seaport city …’ Background prejudice, e.g. interpretation of Margaret Mead‘s recommendation that boys and girls should get different education...

6. Teaching of strategies doesn’t help A learner who has been taught guessing strategies will not necessarily produce correct guesses.

7. Conclusions and reflections Inferring from context is not a reliable way to get at meaning. But may sometimes be the only way (if teacher absent) Don’t waste too much time expecting your students to guess meanings If they DO guess right, does this help them remember later than if they are told?

8. Mondria, J- A. (2003). The effects of inferring, verifying and memorizing on the retention of L2 word meanings. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 25(4), 473-499. Does inferring help retention? Better than given meanings? Idea that ‘deep processing’ helps retention. Importance that inferring is correct – so use pregnant contexts + knowledge of vocab + ability to infer Don’t always infer correctly, so better if can verify with dictionary. Even if better results through inferring – is the time worth it? may be less efficient. Incidental versus intentional learning. Previous studies (those that involved factors other than inferencing eliminated)

9. Various studies Looking up led to better retention Glosses led to higher retention – but in one study this advantage lost later Inferring: sometimes more sometimes less Problem of mistakes in inferencing

10. Research questions: Does meaning-inferred method lead to higher retention than meaning-given? What is the learning effect of the various stages (inferring, verifying, memorizing)? Is there a difference in amount of time between meaning-inferred and meaning-given? What is the contribution of each stage to total time? Achievement rate (i.e. time / achievement ratio) of the various conditions? Is there a relationship between correct inferencing and ultimate retention? Are correctly inferred words retained better?

11. Population: Dutch students aged 14-16 learning French about 2-3 years study. 70 target words, not known, not cognates, not guessable from morphemes. ‘Pregnant‘ sentences All groups given sentences, but meaning-given given also translation Glossary constructed with translation, plus unconnected entries Inference training Test: recall of translation of target items in new (unhelpful) context

12. 4 stages: inference trainings, incidental learning experiment, intentional learning experiment, tests. All groups had experience of all types. Incidental: no time for memorizing Day 1: infer Day 2 infer and verify, Day 14 test Intentional learning: time for memorizing Day 15 meaning inferred method, Day 16 meaning given method, Day 29 retention test

13. Results In general, intentional learning got better results. No significant difference in retention between meaning-inferred and meaning-given. Level of Ss made no difference. Each stage contributes: inferring 6%, verifying 9%, memorizing 32%. (more time spent memorizing on meaning-given) Time: meaning inferred took 27% more time overall than meaning-given

14. Inferencing takes 29% of time, verifying 9%, memorizing 61% (78% in the meaning-given) Meaning-given much more efficient. Correctly inferred remembered better: but when could verify, incorrectly inferred and corrected actually remembered better.

15. Conclusion Meaning-inferred doesn’t lead to better results – why? –less time for memorizing (tired, or think they already know) –less attention paid to form-meaning association, as most time goes on meaning –focus So greater depth of processing at initial learning stage doesn’t lead ot better retention.

16. Implications Meaning-given more efficient Don’t spend time on inferring, looking up in dictionaries etc. Don’t rely on inferencing, make sure there is also verification Importance of memorization stage Efficiency

17. Reflections Accords with my personal professional intuitions ‘Fashions’ can be misleading: check it out Inferencing is a useful skill in itself when the teacher is not available to provide meanings, but need to verify with a dictionary.