A Study On The Correlation Between College Students’ English Vocabulary Ability Framework And Listening Comprehension Performance

Listening is one of the major language skills in English learning.Successful listening comprehension depends on language learners’ ability of vocabulary.However,few studies have investigated the relationship and causes between multiple dimensions of vocabulary ability and listening comprehension.Therefore,this thesis aims to explore the characteristics and causes of the comprehensive framework of college students’ English vocabulary ability in listening,as well as its correlation with their listening comprehension performance.Based on the comprehensive framework of vocabulary ability proposed by Chapelle,namely,knowledge,process,context,and meta-cognitive strategies,this study conducted Immediate Retrospective Verbal Report(IRVR)and interviews to collect and analyze data from 10 junior college students at a university in Jilin Province.In addition,this study conducted 5 tests on 71 students in the university,i.e.,the Vocabulary Levels Test,Productive Vocabulary Levels Test,Word Associates Test,Auditory Vocabulary Knowledge Test,and listening comprehension test.The following conclusions are drawn.First,the characteristics of college students’ English vocabulary ability framework are as follows:(1)IRVR shows the characteristics of knowledge,process,and context levels.The subjects mentioned the problems that arise at the knowledge level of vocabulary have the greatest impact on listening comprehension,especially vocabulary size and word characteristics at the knowledge level,followed by the process level,and finally the field at the context level.(2)Interview show the characteristics of metacognitive strategies.The subjects were good at formulating goals and plans but did not perform well in execution and assessment.Only a few subjects had a better ability to execute their plans and assess the learning process and results.(3)Descriptive statistics of tests show the characteristics of knowledge and process levels.The subjects perform best in terms of vocabulary size in multiple dimensions of this framework,followed by the semantic,phonemic,and collocational features of vocabulary knowledge,and the biggest problem is at the process level.Second,the relationship between college students’ English vocabulary ability framework and their listening comprehension performance is described in the following aspects:(1)IRVR shows the most errors are found in the process dimension,followed by the vocabulary size dimension at the knowledge level,and finally the knowledge of word characteristics and lexicon organization.(2)Interviews show that there is a certain difference in the execution dimension.High-level students are better at execution than low-level ones.(3)Correlation analysis of the tests shows that the correlation between Auditory Vocabulary Knowledge Test and the listening comprehension test was the strongest(r=.508,p <.01).Vocabulary Levels Test scores were moderately correlated with listening comprehension test scores(r=.465,p <.01).There is a weak correlation between Productive Vocabulary Levels Test scores and listening comprehension test scores(r=.356,p <.01).However,Word Associates Test does not correlate with listening comprehension performance(p >.01).Third,the causes of the problems in college students’ English vocabulary ability framework in listening are as follows: Interviews show that the formation is attributed to students’ inappropriate learning strategies when learning English.At the knowledge level,the subjects did not attach high importance to the knowledge of word characteristics when learning words.In addition,they did not consciously compare and memorize words with similar pronunciation or form.At the process level,nor did they review words they learned regularly,and their daily listening practice at the discourse level was insufficient.The results show that the vocabulary ability framework is of great significance to listening comprehension performance.Therefore,it is recommended that English teachers and learners pay attention to the memory of word characteristics knowledge and classify the dimensions of vocabulary ability to form a structured lexicon organization,ultimately achieving rapid retrieval of vocabulary and sentences in listening.In addition,second language learners should pay attention to the diversity of learning methods and actively use meta-cognitive strategies to improve learning efficiency.They should also improve their ability to learn vocabulary in context.