The purpose of this study was to examine Turkish English as a Foreign Language Learners’
(EFL) handling of unknown words while reading English texts. The study also examines the
relationship between these learners’ perceptions and actual practices in the employment of
knowledge sources while trying to guess the meaning of unknown words. The participants
involved in this study were 40 pre-service teacher education students between the ages of 18-22
years old. Data were collected through mixed (qualitative and quantitative) methods, namely,
by a twofold vocabulary strategy survey and a lexical inference test. Pearson correlation
coefficients were conducted to determine what relationships exist among the perceived
behaviours and actual practices of learners for unknown words. The results of the correlation
analyses identified an insignificant correlation between the actual practices and perceptions
of students for the contextual and intralingual knowledge sources.

doi: 10.15700/201503070750