A Study Of The Correlation Between Vocabulary, Reading And Listening Comprehension Ability Of Senior High School Students

Of English learners in China, those who have better ability of listening comprehension will enjoy a better communication in English. A variety of factors contribute to learners’listening ability:vocabulary can help recognize audio information; thinking capacity developed in reading will help to understand the audio information and influence the output of information. There have been many researches home and abroad on vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension; however, studies on listening comprehension, especially on the relationship between vocabulary, reading and listening are still rare.Considering the existing difficulties and problems in listening teaching and in accordance with Nation’s lexical knowledge theory, the author asked 60 senior high school students as subjects to take part in the four tests, concerning relatively the breadth of vocabulary knowledge, the depth of vocabulary knowledge, reading comprehension ability and listening comprehension ability. When the results of the four tests were available, the author used the SPSS to check students’levels on the four aspects and found out the specific correlation between the breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge, reading comprehension, and listening comprehension.Here are the findings of this research.(1) For high school students, there is a highly positive correlation between the depth of vocabulary knowledge and the breadth of knowledge, and this shows that the two aspects of vocabulary knowledge are intrinsically linked and the tight relationship between their developments are mutually reinforcing, and they can promote each other.(2) There is a highly positive correlation between the breadth of knowledge and the depth of vocabulary knowledge on the one hand, and reading comprehension ability and listening comprehension ability on the other. The two aspects of vocabulary knowledge play an important role in training reading and listening comprehension ability of senior high school students. Among them, the correlation between the breadth of vocabulary and reading comprehension is more compact than that between the depth of vocabulary and reading comprehension, indicating the relation between breadth of vocabulary and reading comprehension is closer than that between depth of vocabulary and reading comprehension, that is to say, vocabulary size plays a more prominent role in reading achievement.(3) Students’ reading and listening comprehension are highly correlated, and training of thinking in students’reading comprehension can have a positive effect on comprehension and production of audio information, and it also plays an important role in the improvement of listening comprehension of high school students.(4)To improve students ’ability of listening comprehension, teachers should ask them to enlarge their vocabulary size and learn more about the depth of vocabulary knowledge, and teachers should also pay attention to training of students’thinking ability in reading activities to help them better understand listening materials.There are various factors contributing to learners’ listening ability. Teachers need to help students to enlarge their vocabulary size and encourage them to extend the depth of vocabulary knowledge, improve the accuracy of listening comprehension and production. In addition, teachers should pay attention to cultivating students’thinking ability in the course of reading.