Vocabulary Knowledge And Its Role In Reading Comprehension

This is an empirical study of the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension in the context of English as a foreign language(EFL). Based on the Vocabulary knowledge framework proposed by Qian(1999,2002, 2004),the present study has aimed to assess the Chinese EFL learners' vocabulary knowledge(receptive) from two dimensions,breadth and depth and to further explore the role of vocabulary knowledge,especially vocabulary depth,in reading comprehension.In the present study,the subjects are 109 second-year non-English majors at Tangshan College.The material includes four tests,namely a receptive VS (Vocabulary Size) test,a two part DVK(depth of Vocabulary knowledge) test (including a word associate test and a verb-noun collocation test) and a reading comprehension test(reading part from CET4).The test papers were distributed for them to finish during the subjects' regular English class.After the marking and scoring of the test papers,all raw data were entered into the computer for statistical analysis.The software was utilized to process the data in the SPSS 13.0 (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences).Correlation,linear regression and multiple regression were the main techniques used in the analysis of the data. Through statistical analysis,the following findings are obtained:Firstly,the positively significant correlations exist to various degrees among the knowledge of synonym,antonym,adjective-noun collocation,verb-noun collocation,and total DVK.According to the results of correlation between VS and DVK,we can see that there is a positive and high correlation between the breadth of vocabulary and the depth of vocabulary for the total samples,but for students of different levels of vocabulary size,the development of depth of vocabulary knowledge is unbalanced.Secondly,breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge are significantly and positively correlated with reading comprehension.Compared to breadth of vocabulary knowledge,depth of vocabulary knowledge has a closer relationship with reading comprehension.Thirdly,four subtypes of DVK(depth of vocabulary knowledge) play different roles for students of different levels of DVK.For students in low group of DVK,four aspects of DVK do not play a significant role in reading comprehension.For students in middle group of DVK,it seems that synonym and adjective-noun collocation make more important contribution to reading comprehension.For students in high group of DVK,synonym,antonym, adjective-noun collocation,are three important components for reading comprehension.Fourthly,there is a positive and significant correlation between each type of DVK and reading comprehension for the total samples.Among the four subtypes of Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge investigated,synonym,adjective-noun collocation,and antonym are more closely correlated with reading comprehension than verb-noun collocation does.Fifthly,breadth of vocabulary knowledge alone makes 27.4%prediction of score on reading comprehension while depth of vocabulary knowledge alone makes 56.7%prediction of score on reading comprehension.Depth of vocabulary knowledge added a unique portion(30.3%) of explained variance in score on RC on top of the variance accounted for by VS,while VS added a unique portion(1%) of explained variance in score on RC(reading comprehension) on top of the variance already accounted for by DVK.Therefore generally we can believe that depth of vocabulary knowledge seems to make more contribution to predicting learner's score on reading comprehension.Based on the results of the present study,it is revealed that vocabulary learning is much more than learning as many words as possible.To improve reading comprehension,at least two aspects of depth of vocabulary knowledge need serious attention in making EFL curricula.First,in addition to primary meanings of words,synonymy,polysemy and antonymy are also important elements that should be introduced in the classroom.Second,syntactic properties of words,in particular their collocational relations with other words,are also well worth learners' attention,since the levels of these aspects of word knowledge are positively significantly associated with reading comprehension.To sum up,it is very important to put emphasis on both the breadth and the depth of vocabulary knowledge in English vocabulary teaching and learning.