Study On The Relationship Between Vocabulary Knowledge And Reading Comprehension

Vocabulary has been regarded as an essential building block of language (Schmitt, Schmitt and Clapham, 2001). As the research on vocabulary knowledge has been deepening, lexical researchers have realized that vocabulary knowledge is not a simple question of"yes"or"no". Various vocabulary knowledge frameworks have been proposed by the lexical researchers trying to explain what is involved in knowing a word. However, a consensus has not been reached. Besides vocabulary knowledge, reading is one crucial factor affecting the language ability. It is an instrumental approach to acquaint oneself with the culture of the target language in second language acquisition.In the process of the research of 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. The breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge are two primary dimensions and they are included in most of the various vocabulary knowledge.The present research, whose theoretical rationale is the conceptual framework of vocabulary knowledge of Qian (2002) and which is conducted among 151 English majors from two colleges, explores the relationship between the quality and quantity (breadth and depth) of vocabulary knowledge on one hand and the reading comprehension on the other. The breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension are all tested with test formats which have high and proved validity and reliability. The scores on these three tests are used as raw data and they are processed in the software of Statistic Package for Social Sciences 13.0 (SPSS 13.0).The analysis of the data suggests the following results: firstly, the breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge have positive and comparatively significant correlations with each other; secondly, breadth of vocabulary knowledge and breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge as a whole both have significant and positive correlations with reading comprehension and depth of vocabulary knowledge has positive and comparatively significant correlations with reading comprehension; and lastly, the breadth of vocabulary and depth of vocabulary can effectively predict the performance of reading comprehension respectively, while they, when working together as a whole, can predict the performance of reading comprehension more effectively.The results of the study reconfirm the importance of the breadth of vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension and at the same time, affirm the position of the depth of vocabulary knowledge in it. The progressing of vocabulary knowledge not only requires the increase of quantity but also the promotion of the quality.