Lexical inferencing procedures in L3 Italian

This study is aimed at investigating and describing the different procedures of foreign language learners of Italian when they infer the meaning of unknown words in a written authentic text. Vocabulary is a crucial component in the learning process of a foreign language and many studies show that lexical inferencing is one of the most important strategies when foreign language learners encounter unknown words in a context. Think-aloud protocols in combination with stimulated recalls were used to examine the lexical inferencing procedures of upper secondary school students of Italian as L3. The combination of the two methods is widely used in this line of research (Fraser, 1999; Bengeleil & Paribakht 2004). The informants, of varying proficiency levels of the target language, were interviewed about their language background and use. Their use of interlingual inferencing (the use of the learner's L1 or other previously studied languages), intralingual inferencing (the use of the target language itself such as word classes or morphology) and contextual inferencing (the use of the immediate context or world knowledge) was examined (Haastrup 1999; Wesche & Paribakht 2010). The informants' use of additional strategies, as well as individual differences, was also explored. Interlingual inferencing proved to be the most employed strategy among all the informants, independently of proficiency level of the target language. The use of Italian outside of the school context proved to be a decisive factor for the number of intralingual and contextual strategies utilized. The general finding of this study suggests that even at low proficiency levels students manage to make use of varying inferencing strategies, but the most employed strategy is interlingual inferencing across all proficiency levels.