An Empirical Study On The Effects Of Breadth And Depth Of Vocabulary Knowledge On Non-English Majors’ Reading Comprehension

As the basic component of second language acquisition, vocabulary knowledge is very important for language learning. With the constant development of the studies on vocabulary knowledge, vocabulary knowledge has gradually developed from a one-dimensional concept into a multi-dimensional concept. Many linguists studying vocabulary knowledge have put forward a variety of vocabulary knowledge frameworks. As two fundamental dimensions in the vocabulary knowledge framework, the breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge have received extensive attention.Vocabulary is the cornerstone of language and vocabulary knowledge is the foundation of language skills including listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating. Therefore, vocabulary knowledge becomes an important factor influencing reading comprehension ability. Among the researches at home and abroad, most of them were about vocabulary knowledge or reading comprehension but few were on the relationships between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. And even among such researches, most were about the effects of the breadth of vocabulary knowledge on reading comprehension and the results were not consistent. And the researches about the relationship between the depth of vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension were even rarer. Therefore, the present study aims to conduct an empirical study with the purpose of investigating the relationship between the breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension of non-English majors in EFL environment.Based on Nation’s vocabulary knowledge framework, this empirical study attempts to explore the relationship between the breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. The subjects of the present study are87second-year non-English majors of Shandong University. Three tests including Breadth of Vocabulary Knowledge Test, Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge Test and Reading Comprehension Test are conducted. The scores on the three tests, as the original data, are analyzed with The Pearson correlation analysis and the multiple regression analysis programmed in SPSS 16.0.The results of the three tests indicate that:(1) there is significant and high correlation between the breadth of vocabulary knowledge and the depth of vocabulary knowledge;(2) both the breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge are positively and highly correlated with reading comprehension; and the correlation coefficient between the depth of vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension is a little higher than that between the breadth of vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. For the depth of vocabulary knowledge, both the two components, meaning and collocation are positively correlated with reading comprehension, with the correlation coefficient between collocation and reading comprehension a little lower;(3) the depth of vocabulary knowledge is more powerful in predicting reading comprehension than the breadth of vocabulary knowledge.There are some implications for English teaching and learning on the basis of the present study. During the process of vocabulary knowledge acquisition in the EFL environment, the learners should not just attempt to increase their vocabulary size or master the superficial and basic meanings of words with the purpose of improving their English reading comprehension ability. The learning of vocabulary depth should be paid enough attention. Firstly, besides the primary meanings of words, the synonymy and polysemy should receive more attention. Secondly, since there is positively correlation between collocation and reading comprehension, so the syntactic properties, especially the collocational knowledge, are worth teachers and learners’attention. In addition, according to the results of the present study, there is positive correlation between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension, but the correlation coefficient is not very high. Therefore, in ordeF to improve learners’ reading comprehension level, in addition to vocabulary knowledge, some other factors influencing reading comprehension including background information, grammatical knowledge and reading strategies should also be taken into consideration during the process of English teaching and learning.