Abstract

The significance of vocabulary in second or foreign language cannot be denied. The study explores the knowledge sources used by ESL learners in generating the meanings of the unknown words found in the columns of a daily Dawn. The study also investigates the effect of text length and syntactic property of unknown words in the inferential behaviors of learners. The participants of the study were chosen randomly from BS English, Govt. Emerson College, Multan. The amended taxonomy of knowledge sources and clues given by Bengleil and Paribakht (2004) was used in the study. The inferences verbalized their thoughts while guessing the meanings of the unknown words. The higher group was more successful in their guessing than the lower group. The study also found out that text length and the syntactic property of an unknown word his impact on the process of lexical inferencing. The study recommends the strategy of lexical inferencing as it facilitates reading comprehension and enhances lexical knowledge of learners.

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