Exploring the effect of lexical inferencing and dictionary consultation on undergraduate EFL students’ vocabulary acquisition

This study compares how lexical inferencing and dictionary consultation affect L2 vocabulary acquisition. Sixty-one L1 Arabic undergraduates majoring in English language read target words in semi-authentic English reading materials and were either asked to guess their meaning or look it up in a dictionary. A pre- and delayed post-test measured participants’ knowledge of target words and overall vocabulary size. The results show a significant and comparable learning effect for both vocabulary learning strategies (VLS), with a higher pre-test vocabulary size related to a larger learning effect for both VLS. In addition, the better participants were at guessing correctly, the better they learned words through inferencing. The results suggest that both VLS are equally effective for our learner group and that learners’ overall vocabulary size influences the amount of learning that occurs when using these VLS.