A Study Of The Realtionship Between Vocational College Students' English Vocabulary And Reading Comprehension

Vocabulary is central to language and words are of critical importance to the typical language learner. Nevertheless, researchers and teachers in the field of language acquisition have typically undervalued the role of vocabulary, usually prioritizing syntax or phonology as central to linguistic theory and more critical to language pedagogy. Second language vocabulary learning can date back at least to the second century B.C. However, by reviewing the major language teaching methods which influenced us during the last few centuries, we can find that most researchers paid more attention to grammar teaching and acquisition, few people noticed the importance of vocabulary, and took it for granted that vocabulary acquisition was just memorizing new words again and again, no strategies were needed and it had no value to study this field of language. Nevertheless, vocabulary is no longer a victim of discrimination in second language learning research, or in language teaching, after decades of neglect, and vocabulary is now recognized as central to any language acquisition process, native, or non-native.The long-neglected issue of vocabulary acquisition is currently receiving attention in second language pedagogy and research and has an even bright future. The author pays more attention to vocabulary itself and the factors that influence vocabulary acquisition. The author also mentions vocabulary teaching and learning strategies from the perspective of teachers and students respectively to discover the rules. From the experimental research of the relationship between English vocabulary size and reading comprehension proficiency, the author proves the hypothesis that there is valid correlation between the two variables. The author realizes the importance of reading in promoting the mastery of vocabulary on the basis of the experiment and believes vocabulary acquisition is a long-term process, the students should know the words well, so as to memorize and use vocabulary efficiently after gasping the strategies and skills with the instruction of the teachers, and to enlarge vocabulary by the means of reading all kinds of materials.In chapter I the development of English vocabulary teaching is reviewed withEnglish as a Foreign Language (EFL). Vocabulary has been an interesting topic for linguists, philosophers, and other researchers during the last few centuries, and many theories have been put into forward. The most important and influential one is vocabulary control movement, which aimed to lighten the burden of students by controlling the amount of words that need to be mastered in the 1920s'. It can be seen as the milestone of English vocabulary teaching and acquisition. It is not until the 1980s' that vocabulary teaching was emphasized with the publication of a few important masterpieces. Researchers tried to study vocabulary and vocabulary acquisition from different perspectives and many valuable results were got. The author mainly reviews the following problems in this thesis. (1) The definition and boundary of words;what is a word really means and what are the criteria of mastering a word. A word is not simply what we thought it should be, but actually it is a very complex unit, including single word, multi-word item, and chunk. Generally speaking, a word is 'an item that functions as a single meaning unit, regardless of the number of words it contains'. To acquire vocabulary efficiently, both the teachers and students should know the character of vocabulary and the strategies of teaching and learning. (2) The factors that influence the master of word meaning are complex, core meaning of a word is also important for many English words and multiple meanings, one can widen the word more easily by getting the core meaning. (3) Vocabulary acquisition is a complex progress, the learner may encounter many difficulties, including the learners' previous experience of English and their mother tongue, the way in which the word is learned or taught and so on. Vocabulary acquisition needs the cooperation of the teachers and students, so the teacher should help the students practice in class. The author also views the relationship between reading comprehension and vocabulary size. Reading comprehension is one of the most important language skills, and vocabulary is the factor influences reading very much.Chapter two is about a research the author made with the help of 128 freshmen in Shandong College of Tourism and Hospitality. To make sure there are different degrees of correlation among different students of various vocabulary sizes, the author further divided the 128 subjects into 3 groups according to the criteria of Public English Test System (PETS) level I, II, and III, with the vocabulary size of 1,300 and2,000 as the boundary, and got the correlations with the help of Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 11.5. The result reflects the hypotheses the author predicted. And the result also shows the vocabulary size of students in vocational college is much lower than the average level of university students of the same age (freshmen).In chapter three, the following implications are pointed out:1. The properties of the subjects' English vocabulary and its role in their linguistic performance determine that English vocabulary teaching is a vital aspect in teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL).2. English vocabulary plays a prominently important role in linguistic performance of English, especially in reading comprehension part.3. Learning English words does not only mean learning their pronunciations, spellings and meanings, but also their academic and technical meaning in certain field to meet the need of their career.4. Attention should be paid to the students' center, students are the main part of vocabulary acquisition, and teachers only play the role of guides and leaders. Only on the basis of the students interest and willingness can the teaching and learning process be a successful one.5. It is urgent to enlarge the students' vocabulary size at vocational colleges. Chapter Four is the suggestion. With the support of other researchers and theauthor's own experience, the author suggests much advice about what the teachers, the students can do, the words should be mastered, the characteristics of academic vocabulary, and the choice of reading materials. Vocational college students should try to master the basic 2,000 words shortly after entering college, and then concentrate on academic and technical vocabulary. Academic and technical vocabulary has its own rules and characteristic, the teacher can do many things to help to lighten the students' burden with their vocabulary acquisition and the choice of reading materials to enlarge their vocabulary.Lastly, the author makes a conclusion of the whole thesis, mainly emphasize the difficulty of vocabulary acquisition and the methods of dealing with it. Because vocabulary acquisition is a long-term and complex process, we should regard thestudents as individuals and make students as the center of vocabulary learning. The cross-influence of vocabulary and reading leads us to the efficient method of enlarging vocabulary by enhancing reading.