Research On Correlation Between Range Of English Vocabulary And Reading Ability Of Senior 2 And Senior 3 Students

Vocabulary , together with phone and grammar makes up the three key elements of language, so there should not be any doubt about its important position in language learning. However, speaking of the theoretical and practical research on second language instruction, vocabulary teaching was not always paid enough attention to. We can have a better understanding when looking into the vocabulary requirements in the syllabuses across the 1930s and the 1990s. With the development of the times, more and more people have realized that the importance of vocabulary can never be overemphasized in foreign language teaching and learning. Thus the new English Curriculum for middle school students was born in 2001, together with the textbooks that go with it. In this book high school leavers are supposed to "learn to use 3000 words and 400～500 lexical phrases."(2001) In this thesis the writer tries to find out the correlation between the reading comprehension levels and the range of vocabulary of Senior 2 and Senior 3 students through one range of vocabulary test, two reading comprehension tests and one questionnaire on vocabulary learning strategies. The following are the results of her study: 1) Senior 2 students who use the textbook going with the English Curriculum have a smaller vocabulary than Senior 3 students who use the textbook going with the English Syllabus (1996); 2) The reading comprehension level of Senior 2 is lower than that of Senior 3; 3) There is a high correlation between the reading comprehension levels and the range of vocabulary of these students; 4) As for the vocabulary learning strategies, there is no significant difference between these students except for 3 items. According to the result, the writer suggests some ways to enlarge the range of vocabulary of Senior 3 students, such as over-learning, lexical phraseology and learning through reading.