A Study of Vocabulary Knowledge and Reading Comprehension on EFL Chinese Learners

Vocabulary knowledge is an important aspect of second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition, and it is widely accepted as a fundamental component of L2 proficiency. A clear tendency in the field of L2 vocabulary acquisition study is that vocabulary knowledge is no longer viewed as a one-dimensional construct rather than as a multi-dimension alone. Many various but complementary vocabulary knowledge frameworks have been proposed, in which breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge occupy a primary and central position. Based on a number of previous researches and studies, in this passage, the author designed a series of tests to some Chinese university students to investigate the correlational relationship among vocabulary breadth, depth and reading comprehension. The major research findings of the study indicate that there exists a moderate, positive correlation relationship among vocabulary breadth, vocabulary depth and reading comprehension