The Effects Of English Majors'Vocabulary Breadth And Depth On Their Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension has always accounted for a big proportion in English tests and learning,and it has always been one of the important problems bothering students.In many cases,although they have a certain amount of vocabulary,they still cannot get the ideal results.This study aims to explore the relationship between students' English vocabulary knowledge and their reading comprehension,focusing on three questions: 1)What is the relationship between the students' breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge and their reading comprehension? 2)Which one can better predict the students' reading comprehension performance,the breadth or the depth of vocabulary knowledge? 3)Is there a relation between the breadth and the depth of vocabulary knowledge? If there is,what is it?In this study,the subjects are the English major sophomores from Qingdao University of Science &Technology,and the quantitative research method is adopted.All the subjects involved in this study need to take three tests: 1)The reading comprehension test: The reading part of the national TEM4 is used to investigate the students' reading levels.2)The Vocabulary Level Test(VLT): It is used to investigate the quantity of the students' acceptable vocabulary,which is designed by Schmitt et a1(2001).3)The Depth of the Vocabulary Knowledge Test(DVKT): It is used to evaluate the students' depth of the acceptable vocabulary knowledge,which is designed by Read(1998).Based on the analyses of the data collected from the tests,three major findings are concluded: 1)There is a significant correlation between the students' breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge and their reading comprehension,but the depth of vocabulary knowledge is more significant than the breadth of vocabulary knowledge.2)As for predicting the reading comprehension,both the depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge have the predictive power,but the depth of vocabulary knowledge is more powerful than the breadth of vocabulary knowledge.3)There is a significant correlation between the depth of vocabulary knowledge and the breadth of vocabulary knowledge.