On The Relationship Between Vocabulary Knowledge And Reading Comprehension

As is known, vocabulary, as one of the three basic components of language, is of utmost importance for language acquisition. Thus, mastering good vocabulary knowledge has always been the crucial task for English learners. Reading as one of the most important skills in English learning is based on the acquisition of vocabulary knowledge. The present study tries to explore the exact relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. And both the breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge are taken into consideration, based on the vocabulary knowledge framework proposed by Nation.69first year non-English majors in a technical and vocational school of Nanjing were involved in this study to examine the roles of depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge. And, this study employed three tests to examine the students’ vocabulary size, vocabulary depth and reading comprehension. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences17.0was chosen as the dominant techniques for the statistical analyses.Of all these tests employed, vocabulary size test was designed by the author, on the basis of the Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) designed by Nation, with words picked from glossary of Higher Technical and Vocational School English Curriculum. Depth of vocabulary knowledge tests were composed of four parts--one was revised on the basis of Word Associates Format developed by Read(1998), by using words that suit students’ levels, one is a word formation test and the other two are synonym and antonym tests. The reading comprehension test was chosen from the reading part of PRETCO(Practical English Test for College).The results indicate that (1) there is positive and high correlation between the breadth of vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension and the breadth of vocabulary knowledge can make a main contribution to the predication of reading comprehension performance.(2) There is significant and positive correlation between depth of vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension, and the coefficient of correlation is not high.(3) There is significantly positive and high inter-correlation between VB and DVK.The findings not only make clear the relationship between the breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension, but also arouse our attention to mastering deep knowledge of individual words. The findings especially have significant implications for second language education. Educators and curriculum designers and teachers should incorporate this factor into their EFL syllabi and activities. Besides, the participants of this study are students of higher technical and vocational college, so we will have deep insight into present status of higher technical and vocational education in China, in terms of English teaching. Therefore, effective teaching strategies can be put forward to improve the quality.