A Study On Correlation Between The Non-native Chinese Learners’ Vocabulary Knowledge And Their Reading Comprehension Ability

In recent years, researchers from abroad and at home have made many researchesof the vocabulary k nowledge and the reading comprehens ion ability, but most of theseresearches are about English, and there are few researches on the relationship of thevocabulary knowledge and the reading comprehensio n ability of Chinese as a foreignlangua ge. Therefore, this thesis a ims to explore the correlation between the CFLlearners‘vocabulary knowledge and their reading comprehens ion ability in order toprovide reference for this field and supple ment the studies in this fie ld and to he lp CFLlearners of different reading comprehensio n ability leve ls to find a suitable way toimprove their reading comprehension ability and to acquire vocabulary knowledge.Three research questions need to be explored and answered in this study, and theyare:1. What are the correlations between the vocabulary size and vocabulary depth ofthe CFL learners at different reading comprehensio n ability leve ls? And what are thedifferences between these correlations?2. What are the correlations between thevocabulary size and the reading comprehens ion ability o f the CFL learners at differentreading comprehens ion ability leve ls? And what are the differences between thesecorrelations?3. What is the predicting power of the vocabulary depth dimens ions onthe reading comprehension ability of the CFL learners at different readingcomprehens ion ability leve ls? And what are the differences between the predictingpower?Then a Pearson correlation analys is and a multi-regression analys is provided bySPSS16.0were made of the data resulting from the tests, i.e, the vocabulary s ize test,the vocabulary depth test and the reading comprehens ion ability test. The analys isresults of this stud y indicate that:1) From the respective of the correlation between thevocabulary size and the vocabulary depth, the low group‘s vocabulary and vocabularydepth are highly positively correlated, and the midd le group ‘s come next to it, whilethe correlatio n between the high group ‘s vocabulary s ize and vocabulary depth is notsignificant.2) In terms of the correlation between the vocabulary s ize and the readingcomprehens ion ability, the low group‘s vocabulary size has the most influe nce on itsreading comprehens ion ability, and the middle group ‘s comes next to it, however, thehigh group‘s vocabulary s ize has not significant influence on the readingcomprehens ion ability in terms of the statistics.3) As for the prediction of thedimens ions of the vocabulary depth on the reading comprehens ion ability, the high group‘s vocabulary depth dime nsio n of synonyms can predict the most change of thereading comprehensio n ability, the middle group‘s vocabulary depth dimens ion ofpolysemys can predict the most change of the reading comprehension ability, and thelow group‘s vocabulary depth dimens ions of polyse mys and collocations can predictthe most of the change of the reading comprehension ability.Such implications as follows can be derived from the results:First, more attention should be paid to the mastery of the synonyms than to otherthree dime ns ions of vocabulary depth in order to improve the high group ‘s readingcomprehension ability;Second, the middle group should focus on the expans ion of their vocabulary sizeand a better master of the polysemys in order to improve the ir reading comprehens ionability.Third, the low group should focus on both the expansion of the ir vocabulary sizeand a better master of the polyse mys and the collocations in order to improve theirreading comprehension ability.