It would seem that these decoding errors were associated to some extent with text
problems. Learners failed to recognize the word ‘Securitas’, perhaps not unsurprisingly, as
proper nouns such as names of people, organizations, or places, are typically low frequency
items and unfamiliar to learners who may have had limited experience of the target culture.
In terms of process problems, the known word ‘security’ was preferred in responses, as it
was a strong candidate for activation given its first three syllables were identical to
‘Securitas’. Having preferred ‘security’ as a lexical match, most learners dealt with the final
syllable /tæs/ by ‘imagining’ a word boundary had existed, and they had perceived and
activated other lexical items corresponding to this erroneous onset. In particular, ‘task’ was
favoured by most of the given learners, despite a vowel discrepancy (/a:/ instead of /æ/).
Though slightly odd, the phrase ‘security task’ fitted the context. That is, “A security task
van…” had a measure of appropriacy, and the learners had considered it a plausible option.
Again, some learners persisted with an erroneous lexical choice, and disregarded whether or
not ‘tax’ or ‘asked’ were semantically appropriate.
The word ‘rammed’ in this clause was also problematic, with learners generating a variety
of responses (N=31), presented in Table 5, reflecting their miscomprehension.