Use of morphological and contextual cues in children’s lexical inferencing in L1 and L2

Abstract In an experimental design, we investigated how fifth-grade readers use morphological and contextual information to infer the meaning of unknown words, what extent this is related their cognitive linguistic skills. A group 166 Dutch children (59 L1, 107 L2) performed a lexical inferencing task in which availability was manipulated. Readers used both inferencing. Good decoding skill more information. Reading comprehension associated with cues. L1 L2 did not differ respect less inferences than did. This difference driven by weak vocabulary. The especially high good reading skills, low Results indicate that access information, crucial, whereas for inferencing, minimum competence needed, makes it challenging readers.