Factors Influencing EFL Learners’ Lexical Processing Strategies toward Unfamiliar Words

This study investigated factors influencing on EFL Korean learners’ perceptions of or attitudes toward their strategic behaviors in coping with unfamiliar words while reading texts in English. Seventy-nine undergraduate students participated in and responded to the survey instrument designed to answer the research questions for this study. The results showed that overall there was no great variance among the reasons for employing lexical processing strategies: ignoring, inferring, and consulting a dictionary. However, with regard to factors influencing on participants’ employing lexical processing strategies, ‘gender’ was the most significant and influential factor than any factors, such as participants’ level of English proficiency or age. The results also showed that there was no significant factor influencing on participants’ employing both inferring and consulting a dictionary strategies; whereas, ‘gender’ had a significant influence on the explanation of participants’ ignoring strategy use. In addition, while there was no significant difference between high and low level student groups in relation to use of both strategies (ignoring and consulting a dictionary); there was a significant difference between two groups in terms of inferring strategy use. That is, participants in the advanced group tended to infer more frequently than those of the low group.