A Study On The Relationship Between Vocabulary Knowledge And Reading Comprehension Among English Majors

Vocabulary knowledge has been regarded as an essential building block of language.As deeper understanding has been reached about vocabulary knowledge,researchers seem to believe that vocabulary knowledge mainly includes two aspects,vocabulary size and vocabulary depth.Vocabulary size refers to the number of words learners have mastered while vocabulary depth concerns how well one knows a word.Apart from vocabulary knowledge,reading comprehension,as one of the basic language skills and a main way of language input,is very essential in language learning.When it comes to the research on second language acquisition,the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension has been drawing more and more attention.It has long been accepted that vocabulary knowledge is crucial in reading comprehension.Hence,both at home and abroad,studies on the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension has been thriving,with studies abroad particularly impressive.Based on previous studies,the present study aims to investigate the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension among 80 sophomores of English majors in a university in China.A VLT(Vocabulary Levels Test),a WAT(Word Associates Test)and a reading comprehension test excerpted from a TEM-4 test have been adopted.The present study aims to address the following three questions:1)To what extent do scores on vocabulary size,vocabulary depth and reading comprehension correlate with each other in this study?2)To what extent do vocabulary size and depth as a whole and respectively contribute to reading comprehension in this study?Is vocabulary depth a stronger predictor to reading comprehension than vocabulary size in this study?3)As two subcomponents of vocabulary depth,namely polysemy and collocation,what is their relative variance contribution to the prediction of scores on reading comprehension over and above vocabulary size?Which one predicts reading comprehension better?Participants in this study accomplished two vocabulary tests and a reading test in two consecutive weeks and the data obtained is processed with Pearson analysis and Multiple Regression analysis through SPSS.The results showed:firstly,vocabulary size is positively correlated with vocabulary depth and reading comprehension,and vocabulary depth is correlated with reading as well.The highest correlation was found between vocabulary size and reading comprehension.Secondly,vocabulary size seems to have stronger prediction to reading comprehension compared with vocabulary depth and the predictive power is the strongest when vocabulary size and depth work together.Thirdly,both polysemy and collocations are potential in predicting reading comprehension,but polysemy is better in the prediction of reading.The results of the study reconfirm the significance of the breadth of vocabulary knowledge in predicting reading comprehension performance,and in the meantime,unique contribution of vocabulary depth.on the basis of vocabulary size has been emphasized as well.This study has some implications for English teaching:first of all,vocabulary knowledge predicts reading comprehension to a great extent,so it is essential to improve students’ vocabulary;Secondly,vocabulary knowledge concerns both vocabulary size and vocabulary depth so in English teaching teachers should on one hand guide students to increase the number of words students master and on the other hand promote students’,deep understanding of words;Besides,teachers should adopt various ways to provide authentic contexts and exercises as many as possible to make students have deeper understanding of vocabulary.