The Effect Of Lexical And Grammatical Knowledge On Listening Performance In EFL Situation

This empirical study explored the relationship between breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge as well as grammatical knowledge to listening comprehension in the context of English as a foreign language (EFL). Using multivariate analyses, the study examined the roles of breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge as well as grammatical knowledge in assessing the performance of a group of young adult ESL learners in listening comprehension tasks. Specifically, the research was designed to answer the following three questions: (1) To what extent are vocabulary knowledge (vocabulary size and depth of vocabulary knowledge) and grammatical knowledge associated with listening comprehension (2) To what extent do vocabulary size, depth of vocabulary knowledge and grammatical knowledge contribute to successful listening comprehension (3) Which dimension of vocabulary knowledge interacts greatly with grammatical knowledge to contribute to the success of the listening comprehensionThe subjects in the present study are 95 non-English majors at the second grade at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The material includes four tests, namely a Listening Comprehension test (LC -- listening part from CET-6), a Vocabulary Size test (VS), a Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge test (DVK), and a Grammaticality Judgment test (GJ). There are altogether four general variables: VS, DVK, GJ, and LC. The independent variables are scores from VS, scores from DVK, and scores from GJ and scores from listening comprehension part of CET-6 is the dependent variable.In the full sample, the large vocabulary sample, and the small vocabulary sample, correlational analyses were used to test the relationship between lexical and grammatical knowledge to listening comprehension, and multiple regression analyses tested the variance accounting for lexical and grammatical knowledge in listening comprehension. The following findings are obtained: Firstly, in the full sample, lexical knowledge (including breadth and depth) and grammatical knowledge are highly and positively intercorrelated with listening comprehension. Compared with grammatical knowledge, lexical knowledge has a closer relationship with listening comprehension; compared with breadth of vocabulary knowledge, depth of vocabulary knowledge has a closer relationship with listening comprehension. However, in the small vocabulary sample, only DVK has a high and positive correlation with listening comprehension; and in the large vocabulary sample, both DVK and GJ are significantly correlated with listening comprehension.Secondly, in the full sample, breadth of vocabulary knowledge alone makes 19.3% prediction of listening comprehension, depth of vocabulary knowledge alone makes 24.8% of explained variance in listening comprehension, and grammatical knowledge added only 4.4% explained variance in listening comprehension over and above the prediction already made by VS and DVK. Through the stepwise regression analyses, we found that VS was excluded from the full sample mode and the large vocabulary size sample model, while grammatical knowledge (GK) was excluded from the small vocabulary size sample.Thirdly, interaction of lexical knowledge, precisely depth of vocabulary knowledge and grammatical knowledge contributes greatly to the success of listening performance.