Abstract
The purpose of the study is to analyse the processes involved in gap-filling in English as L2, which may be considered to be a form of text construction. It is based, on the one hand, on models of the multilingual lexicon which assume that both syntactic and semantic properties are stored within lexical entries (Herwig, 2001), or more precisely, lemmas (e.g., Jiang, 2000), and, on the other hand, on models of reading and writing which involve both bottom-up and top-down processing (de Bot, Paribakht, & Wesche, 1997; Schoonen, Snellings, Stevenson, & Van Gelderen, 2009). The study, carried out with advanced (MA-level) students of English philology, consisted of two parts, a multiple-choice test, and a “free production” gap-filling task, in which the students could provide any words that, in their view, met the semantic, syntactic and collocational requirements of the text. The tasks were followed by a short retrospective questionnaire, aiming to investigate the reasons for the students’ lexical choices. As the results show, gap-filling is a very complex process, where excessive reliance on bottom-up information, disregarding the context, often results in errors, although errors can also result from paying insufficient attention to such local cues as syntactic and collocational restrictions. They also prove the importance of maintaining a coherent mental model (Johnson-Laird, 1983) of the text during comprehension, and of acquiring accurate lemma information from L2 input, instead of copying lemma information from L1 lexical entries (cf. Jiang, 2000).
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Appendices
Appendix 1: The Multiple-Choice Test Used in Task 1
“Respect Your Boss”
Being the secretary of an ambitious albeit rather incompetent boss can be a nightmare. Joan’s boss was in the habit of making promises he did not intend to keep, which often resulted in angry customers (1) ____________ her to tell them when their orders were going to arrive.
Now that the company was going to celebrate its 50th anniversary Joan wondered what he would (2) ________________ by his inconsiderate behaviour. His latest blunder had been a (3) __________________ speech made during the visit of the Minister of Industry, which proved to be a(n) (4) ___________________ of the company’s activities. As his secretary, Joan had to stand beside him and keep a (5) ______________ face.
The preparation of the anniversary celebrations was also her responsibility. First of all, she had to propose a(n) (6) _______________ solution to the problem of inviting the right guests, also from among the competitors, so as not to offend anyone. Second, she had to create a social programme that would (7) __________________ all the guests’ expectations. She thought of inviting a musical group called The Breton Princes, which specialized in Celtic music, but then she started to fear that such a (8) _________________ would not suit all tastes. One thing was certain: she had to do her job well and could not (9) ____________ her boss, or else she would lose her job.
Running around the building, she even had no time to eat. In a hurry, she bought a doughnut and bit into it, and the marmalade (10) ______________ all over her cheek.
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1.
A. pestering B. requiring C. demanding D. pleading
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2.
A. scatter B. mix up C. mess up D. demolish
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3.
A. witty B. joyful C. humorous D. comical
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4.
A. image B. portrayal C. misrepresentation D. portrait
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5.
A. smooth B. straight C. motionless D. stark
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6.
A. witty B. plucky C. wise D. ingenious
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7.
A. meet B. fit C. suit D. correspond
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8.
A. treasure B. delicacy C. rarity D. variety
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9.
A. deny B. defy C. refuse D. reject
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10.
A. dashed B. trickled C. gashed D. gushed
Appendix 2: The Text Used in Task 2
‘Doing Good is Not Always Easy’
Patricia, an environmentalist and human rights activist, was so tired that she was beginning to regard working for her favourite (1) ________________ as (2) ____________ heavy a burden. People did not often want to listen to her (3) ______________ and, when asked to make a donation to charity or to sign a petition, they would reply in a (4) _________ way, saying, for example, that it was a waste of time and money.
That day she was really frustrated, as nothing seemed to be running (5) __________. (6) ___________ had she announced a campaign to rescue horses from transport in inhumane conditions when she was told it was no use helping animals as long as there were people who needed help.
In (7) ______________, she felt obliged to raise money for the victims of a drought in Ethiopia. Holding a newspaper (8) ______________ describing the situation, she thought it would be a good idea to organise a sporting event. People would be (9) _______________ to run or cycle in order to raise the necessary funds.
“If people were more generous”, she thought, “we might also be able to launch a campaign to (10) ____________ off a malaria epidemic in Bangladesh”.
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Włosowicz, T.M. (2016). Gap-Filling in English as L2 as a Form of Text Construction Using Contextual Cues. In: Chodkiewicz, H., Steinbrich, P., Krzemińska-Adamek, M. (eds) Working with Text and Around Text in Foreign Language Environments. Second Language Learning and Teaching. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33272-7_11
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