Inferring from context 上下文推断词义述评（英语教学法原著选读73）

以下英文原文节选自上海外语教育出版社出版的《教学法丛书：词汇：描述、习得与教学》一书，本篇论文标题《Current Trends in teaching second language vocabulary》，作者Anita J. Sokmen。

导读

本段对很长一个时期以来几乎统治了词汇教学的思想——利用上下文进行词义的推断——进行了述评，在不否定其作用的前提下指出其若干弊端，包括：

一、纯粹靠上下文学习生词，则学够足量词汇将是一个漫长的过程，进展比较缓慢；

二、靠上下文推断词义很容易出错，如果总是出错，则会影响到学习的长期效果；

三、单纯利用上下文猜测词义，则可能出现因为词汇量不足而影响理解的情况；

四、过度强调上下文推断词义，会对那些不精于此道、但仍然有其他有效方法的学习者造成不利影响；

五、最后一点，也是最重要的，猜出来的词义并不一定能长期记住。

原文 

For many of us, our perspective on teaching vocabulary was greatly influenced by the top-down, naturalistic, and communicative approaches of the 1970s and 1980s. The emphasis was implicit, incidental learning of vocabulary. We were taught the importance of directing L2 students to recognize clues in context, use monolingual dictionaries, and avoid defining words or glossing texts with their bilingual equivalents. Textbooks emphasized inferring word meaning from context as the primary vocabulary skill. Although exposure to a word in a variety of contexts is extremely important to understanding the depth of the word's meaning, providing incidental encounters with words is only one method to facilitate vocabulary acquisition.

The arguments for not focusing solely on implicit instruction to facilitate second language vocabulary acquisition come from a number of potential problems associated with inferring words from context.

First of all, acquiring vocabulary mainly through guessing words in context is likely to be a very slow process. Considering that many L2 learners have a limited amount of time to learn a body of words, it is not perhaps the most efficient way to approach the task (Sternberg, 1987; Carter and McCarthy, 1988; Scherfer, 1993).

Secondly, inferring word meaning is an error-prone process. Recent studies have shown students seldom guess the correct meanings (Pressley, Levin, and McDaniel, 1987; Kelly, 1990). Students, especially those with low-level proficiency in the target language, are often frustrated with this approach and it is difficult to undo the possible damage done by incorrect guessing.

Third, even when students are trained to use flexible reading strategies to guess words in context, their comprehension may still be low due to insufficient vocabulary knowledge (Haynes and Baker, 1993).

Fourth, putting too much emphasis on inference skills when teaching vocabulary belies the fact that individual learners have different, yet successful, styles of acquiring unfamiliar vocabulary. Hulstijn (1993), in his study of Dutch high school students learning English, found that those good at inferring meaning could acquire vocabulary more easily than those who could not infer well but that the opposite was not true. Students with large vocabularies were not necessarily good at inferring, i.e. they had used other means, such as word lists, to acquire a high level of word knowledge. As a result, Hulstijn suggests that we teach inferring skills as an option, but also allow students to decide whether they need to look up unfamiliar words.

Finally, and most importantly, guessing from context does not necessarily result in long-term retention. Even if a student is exposed to a word in 'pregnant' contexts, those rich with clues, acquisition does not automatically result the first time.

Of the increasing number of studies pointing in that direction, three are noted here. Parry's (1993) longitudinal study of a university level ESL student's progress reading in English shows that this student could guess the correct meanings while working through a text but not when tested later. When Mondria and Wit de-Boer (1991) improved the clues in the context of readings for Dutch secondary students learning French, guessing was better, but there was no improvement in retention of vocabulary. In Wesche and Paribakht’s (1994) study of intermediate level adult ESL students, those who were just doing extensive reading made smaller increases in word acquisition than those who read and completed accompanying vocabulary exercises. It has become more apparent that what it takes to guess the meaning of an unfamiliar word is not necessarily what it takes to store it in one’s memory, perhaps because the most immediate need -comprehension - has been met.