Technical University EFL Learners’ Reading Proficiency and Their Lexical Inference Performance

This study investigated whether technical university EFL learners’ reading proficiency affected their lexical inference performance and their responses to the contextual instruction. A total of 145 Taiwanese first-year technical university students participated in this study. The instruments in this study involved a GEPT test, a lexical inference task, and a vocabulary strategy questionnaire. Pearson Product Moment Correlations, simple Regression, and pair-wise t-test analysis were conducted to analyze the data collected from the GEPT test, the lexical inference task, and the vocabulary strategy questionnaire. The results indicated that there was significant correlation between EFL learners’ reading proficiency and their lexical inference performance and their strategies. However, while instruction of contextual inference had a positive effect on the more proficient learners’ lexical inference ability, a significant impact on their strategy use was not found. Discussions were presented, followed by a variety of pedagogical applications for EFL learners as well as suggestions for further study.