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The Study Of Depth And Breadth Of Vocabulary Knowledge In Reading Comprehension Of Chinese English Majors

Posted on:2018-03-17Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y N XiaFull Text:PDF
GTID:2405330596968826Subject:Foreign Language and Literature
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Vocabulary knowledge is an important aspect of second language acquisition.In recent years,with the development of vocabulary assessment,vocabulary knowledge is no longer regarded as a one-dimensional construct.Various and complementary vocabulary knowledge frameworks have been proposed,while breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge attracted much attention.In previous studies on L2 vocabulary acquisition,much attention has been paid to breadth of knowledge and its relation to reading comprehension,only a few number of studies have paid attention to the relationship between depth of vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension.Therefore,the thesis aims to explore the importance of depth and breadth of vocabulary Knowledge in reading comprehension under foreign language teaching circumstances through empirical studies.Based on Nation's framework,the thesis attempts to explore the relationship between breadth and depth of vocabulary and reading comprehension.The thesis,consisting of four tests,Word association test(WAT),word matching,synonym and antonym of words and TEM4 reading comprehension,is conducted with 99 English majoring students,including seniors and freshmen from Qingdao Agricultural University.Their scores are collected as original data for the examination of SPSS 22.0's T test.The major findings of the thesis indicate that:(1)among responses of word association test,there are more and more semantic responses and non-semantic ones(clang-other responses)become fewer and fewer with the lexical development.(2)With the development of language proficiency,subjects are more inclined to produce idiomatic and conventional collocations.(3)For responses from both low-level group and high-level group,there still exist a great number of phonological responses.This proves that non-semantic responses still play an important role in learners' future studies.(4)L2 learners' breadth of vocabulary knowledge obviously and positively correlates with their depth of vocabulary knowledge.(5)Breadth of vocabulary knowledge is a more power predictor for reading comprehension.(6)The more semantic responses are presented in word association test,the better they performed in word matching,antonyms and synonyms of words and reading comprehension.Based on the results of the thesis,it is concluded that vocabulary learning is much more than a simple matter of recognizing and memorizing the superficial meaning.L2 learners should master various aspects of words.To improve reading comprehension,leaners should not only grasp the meanings of words but also understand the semantic correlations between them.
Keywords/Search Tags:vocabulary knowledge, reading comprehension, breadth of vocabulary, depth of vocabulary, word association
PDF Full Text Request
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