Abstract: Lexical inferencing is both an effective reading strategy and an important form of cognitive processing, which is indispensable to the comprehension and construction of second language texts. Based on the cognitive model of lexical reasoning proposed by Huckin & Bloch (1993), three research focuses of lexical reasoning by scholars at home and abroad in the past three decades are sorted out and reviewed: the knowledge sources of lexical reasoning, the strategies of lexical reasoning, and the influencing factors of lexical reasoning, and finally, the future research directions in the field are thought about and prospected.