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Regional Language Centre Journal 39.1
Introduction
The crucial role of vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension has
been well recognized in first language (L1) situations and this has
appeared to be true of second language (L2) settings as well. However, in
relation to a sociocultural context such as Singapore, where English is
designated as an L1 in the school curriculum but the majority of students
still learn it as an L2 (Cheah 2004; Gopinathan 2004; Pakir 2004), little is
known about how vocabulary knowledge could affect reading compre-
hension. Teachers of English in secondary schools in Singapore have been
frequently confronted with the problems of students’ inability to handle
‘difficult words’ in reading comprehension. Comprehension scores of the
students are usually low. In some neighbourhood schools, the majority of
students’ comprehension scores are below 50% and the school in which
our data was collected falls into this category. A survey we conducted in
2002 with the secondary year-4 Normal Academic Course students
indicated that they did not understand the passages they read because they
did not know the words in those passages.1
The students on whom we report in this paper were mainly average to
below average English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students in terms of
language proficiency as measured by the school’s English Language
examination, but they were students taking the Express Course. They
came from families where English is not the dominant language for com-
munication and most parents do not speak or read in English at all. The
English teacher of this group of year-4 Express Course students remarked
that only 40% of the students in her class were ‘readers’ and their com-
prehension performance was average to below average. When prompted
for the possible reasons for their weaknesses in comprehension, the
teacher cited vocabulary as the major source of difficulty. These students
did not know many of the words in the passage that they read, and they
had difficulties in answering the questions which elicited the meaning of
words in the text. Given that reading lessons were mainly answering com-
prehension questions which put a premium on word knowledge, it was of
no surprise that their comprehension performance was affected negatively
by the relative insufficiency of vocabulary. These students will be taking
the Singapore-Cambridge General Certificate of Education (Ordinary)
Level Examinations (GCE ‘O’ Levels), including English Language, next
year, which are required of them in order to graduate from secondary
schools. The Mid-Year School Examination results already suggested
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The Role of Vocabulary in Reading Comprehension
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Regional Language Centre Journal 39.1
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The Role of Vocabulary in Reading Comprehension
many words are most probably poor readers’. Sternberg (1987: 90) adds
that ‘one’s level of vocabulary is highly predictive, if not deterministic, of
one’s level of reading comprehension’. Within the context of second lan-
guage research in reading, findings on the reading processes and vocabu-
lary threshold have consistently shown the significant contribution and the
importance of vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension perform-
ance (Barnett 1986; Fukkink, Hulstijn and Simis 2005; Garcia 1991; Koda
1994; Laufer 1997; Zhang 2000, 2001a, 2002a, 2002b; see Alderson 2000;
Bernhardt 2005; Koda 2005; Nation 2001, for reviews).
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The Role of Vocabulary in Reading Comprehension
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Regional Language Centre Journal 39.1
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The Role of Vocabulary in Reading Comprehension
group of learners, since no learners reading at the 80% level attain ade-
quate comprehension. However, it must be noted that the criterion for
adequate comprehension is set at 86%, or, 12 out of 14 possible correct
answers. One could also take issue with the generalizability of the findings
since the number of subjects for each version is really small, ranging from
16 to 17 subjects for each version of the texts. Nevertheless, the findings
may be taken as potential for further research and confirmation.
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The Role of Vocabulary in Reading Comprehension
Method
Our study was undertaken with a view to investigating empirically a group
of secondary year-4 Express Course students’ vocabulary knowledge and
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Regional Language Centre Journal 39.1
Participants
Thirty-seven students from a neighbourhood secondary school participated
in this study. They had all completed six years of primary school educa-
tion in English as the medium of instruction in the Singapore education
system where English is publicly known as the ‘common language’ for all
Singaporeans (Ho and Alsagoff 1998). They were placed in the Express
Course because of their relatively successful performance on the PSLE
examinations in English, Mathematics, Science, and Mother Tongue,
which were the major subjects taken into account when they were assessed
for placement into various courses in the Singapore secondary schools.
Data Collection
Vocabulary Levels Tests Version 2 (Schmitt, Schmitt and Clapham 2001)
initially developed by Paul Nation, and revised by Norbert Schmitt and
associates, were adopted for collecting the data in this study. The Vocabu-
lary Levels Tests are widely used as measures of L2 students’ vocabulary
sizes. The reported reliability is .922 for the 2,000 Word Level Test, .927
for the 3,000 Word Level Test, and .927 for the 5,000 Word Level Test
(Schmitt, Schmitt and Clapham 2001).
The Vocabulary Levels Tests Version 2 (2,000 Word Level Test, 3,000
Word Level Test, and 5,000 Word Level Test) were administered in Term
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The Role of Vocabulary in Reading Comprehension
3 during curriculum time. The students were informed that the purpose of
the vocabulary test was to find out the extent of their vocabulary
knowledge. They were told to complete every item, and not to leave any
blanks. All 37 students present on that day participated in this study and
completed the test.
A week later, the students’ comprehension performance was assessed
using the 2003 GCE ‘O’ Level English Language Paper 2 passage. It was
a 300-word expository passage entitled ‘How Money Began’. The passage
traced the development of the concept of money, from barter trading to the
use of metals, cowry shells to the modern idea of money as a medium of
exchange. None of the students had been exposed to this text before.
All the 37 students were invited to take the test. They were given one
hour and 40 minutes to complete the test which was the actual time frame
given in the GCE ‘O’ Level English Language Paper 2 Examination. The
students took the comprehension test during their English Language
afternoon study programme on Wednesday. This was the slot allocated
for secondary year-4 Express Course and year-5 Normal Academic Course
students to complete comprehension or writing tasks. The comprehension
test consisted of two parts, one consisting of short-answer questions (25
marks), and the other, a summary question (25 marks). The short answer-
questions were comprised of literal and inferential questions. There were
also four questions on vocabulary where the students were asked to
explain the meanings of the given words. Marks were awarded only when
the students used their own words in explaining the meanings of these
words, and that the words substituted must fit the context of the passage.
The summary question required students to summarize the main ideas or
points in the passage. Marks were awarded both for accuracy in sum-
marizing the points and the use of language. To guarantee inter-rater
reliability all the reading-related tests were marked by another teacher,
who had many years of experience setting and marking reading compre-
hension tests. Final inter-rater reliability was acceptable (r = .89).
In addition, in order to find out the number of difficult words in reading
the passage, the students were instructed to circle the words in the passage
they thought to be difficult. All 37 students were able to complete the
comprehension test within the stipulated time.
Data Analysis
The main method used for processing the data was correlation analysis
using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS). The means, stan-
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Regional Language Centre Journal 39.1
dard deviations and correlation coefficients were obtained for the inde-
pendent variables (Vocabulary Levels Test, means for number of difficult
words, and students’ rating for vocabulary difficulty) and dependent
variables (Comprehension Scores, Short-answer Questions and Summary).
By using correlation statistics, we intended to determine whether or
not the vocabulary size of these learners was correlated with their com-
prehension performance as measured by the short-answer questions and
the summary question. In other words, we were able to address the ques-
tion: to what extent students’ vocabulary size and vocabulary difficulty
were reliable indicators of students’ comprehension performance.
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The Role of Vocabulary in Reading Comprehension
The high mean scores for the Vocabulary Levels Test at the 2,000-word
and 3,000-words levels indicated that the group had sufficient vocabulary
knowledge of high frequency words. However, results for the 5,000-word
level suggested that this group might not have adequate mastery at this
level yet. Qian (2002: 525-26) remarks that the 5,000-word level ‘is a
boundary level between high-frequency level and low-frequency level’.
Since they are ‘O’ level candidates and reading materials at this level
consist mainly of low-frequency words, they may encounter many difficult
words in their reading materials, which in turn may adversely affect their
comprehension of the reading materials. This partly explains the low mean
scores for the comprehension task, both for the short-answer questions and
the summary question. We will discuss this issue further in the next
section where we present the correlation results.
Table 2 shows the two-tailed correlations between the independent
variables and the dependent variables. Significant correlation was found
between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension at the 2,000-
word level (r = .423, p < .01). Although a positive correlation was found
between VLT 2,000 and the summary task, the correlation was not statis-
tically significant. At the 3,000-word level, significant correlation yielded
only for the short-answer questions as in the VLT 2,000 (r = .848, p <
.01), but not for the Summary task, and this in turn affected the results of
the correlation between VLT 3,000 and the reading comprehension task.
The correlation between VLT 5,000 and the reading comprehension task
was not found statistically significant. In other words, at the 5,000-word
level, results did not indicate any significant correlations for the two com-
prehension tasks.
Students’ perception of the number of difficult words did not correlate
significantly with comprehension. Although students indicated that there
were few difficult words in the passage, their performance in the short-
answer questions and summary proved otherwise. This could either sug-
gest that students underestimated the difficult words in the passage or their
judgment of vocabulary difficulty was unreliable. This issue requires
further investigation, as many variables might play their roles in reading
comprehension, as rightly pointed out by Bernhardt (2005), Grabe and
Stoller (2002) and Nassaji (2003), among others. The significant correla-
tions obtained between the vocabulary level scores at the 2,000-word and
3,000-word levels and reading comprehension as measured by the short
answer questions seem to suggest that vocabulary knowledge of 2,000-
and 3,000-word levels is predictive of comprehension performance.
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Regional Language Centre Journal 39.1
Table 2. Correlations among Scores on the VLT 2,000, VLT 3,000, VLT 5,000,
Number of Difficult Words, Short-answer Questions, Summary and Reading
Comprehension (N = 37)
Short-
VLT VLT VLT Difficult Reading
answer Summary
2,000 3,000 5,000 Words Comprehension
Questions
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The Role of Vocabulary in Reading Comprehension
rest of the students obtained three marks and below. Students lost substan-
tial marks because of their inability to cope with these questions. This sug-
gests that vocabulary difficulty affects their comprehension performance
which partly explains the low mean score for the short-answer questions.
Another possible explanation for the low mean scores for short-answer
questions is that in answering questions that demand that students use their
own words, students are tested on both comprehension and production
skills. To get the answers students must understand the information, locate
the information and retrieve from memory the synonyms for these words.
Therefore, two skills are tested, which increases the difficulty of these
questions. Reading and writing are inter-related but quite disparate skills
(Bereiter and Scardamalia 1987). Insofar as vocabulary knowledge is con-
cerned, these questions test both breadth and depth of vocabulary knowl-
edge, which again enhances the difficulty of the questions.
The significant correlations obtained between students’ vocabulary
knowledge at the 2,000-word and 3,000-word levels and the short-answer
questions suggest that vocabulary knowledge of high-frequency words is
necessary but not sufficient for students to do well in the short-answer
questions. Vocabulary knowledge of low-frequency words is required
since close to 50% of the marks are allocated to questions that elicit stu-
dents’ vocabulary knowledge (mainly low-frequency words and syno-
nyms), not just the ability to locate information in the text. Low-frequency
words occur infrequently in any text. They are mainly moderate-frequency
words that are not listed in the high-frequency list, words that we rarely
use and encounter in our daily language. These low-frequency words,
especially technical words for other subject areas, usually make up 5% of
the words in an academic text (Nation 2001).
The non-significant correlations between vocabulary knowledge and
the students’ performance scores on the summary task may be partly due
to the effect of task type. The GCE ‘O’ Level Summary task tests
students’ ability to identify the gist of the passage or the macro-
propositions of text. Students must understand the main points of the
passage and organize the pieces of information and present them in a
coherent paragraph. Marks are awarded for the ability to present the
main points in an organized manner and for students using their own
words. Students can score 15 marks out of the maximum 15 marks, while
a maximum of 10 marks are awarded for using their own words and
correct grammar. The maximum possible score for the summary is 25.
We mentioned earlier that the students’ mean scores for summary were
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Regional Language Centre Journal 39.1
low: 12.5. This indicates that the students did not have sufficient grasp of
the text, and that their vocabulary knowledge of high-frequency words
was insufficient to cope with the summary task. Inability to adequately
understand, locate and integrate information may affect their perform-
ance in the summary task. The low scores were also attributed to inade-
quacy in vocabulary knowledge, namely in a lack of the breadth of
vocabulary knowledge, as the summary task also tested their ability to
use their own words. This means that they must know sufficient low-
frequency words and synonyms.
Taken together, the above findings answer the second research ques-
tion: How does vocabulary difficulty in an expository text affect stu-
dents’ comprehension performance? Evidently, the inability to substitute
words that fit the context of the passage and the inadequacy in depth of
vocabulary knowledge adversely affects the comprehension scores of
these learners.
Our finding that there is no statistically significant correlation between
the 5,000-word level vocabulary test scores and the reading comprehen-
sion scores does not lend support to studies by Laufer (1992a, 1992b) and
Qian (2002). Studies by Laufer and Qian showed significant correlations
between both low- and high-frequency vocabulary and reading compre-
hension. We assume that the slightly different findings might have been
due to the different ways in which we measured students’ vocabulary
knowledge and reading comprehension. For example, Laufer grouped her
participants according to their performance on the Vocabulary Levels
Tests, and the reading comprehension scores were obtained using multiple-
choice questions. In our case, we simply administered the Vocabulary
Levels Tests to all participants. The results from the present study might
have turned out differently if we had used the same task format as these
researchers. Testing reading comprehension using MCQ format could be
relatively easier compared to the short-answer questions and the summary
format used in this study. As explained earlier, the short-answer questions,
the summary question, and the marking schemes following the format of
GCE ‘O’ Level were an entirely different comprehension format from the
MCQ format. In a way, task type might also have a bearing on com-
prehension performance.
Conclusion
The major outcome of this study supports the claim that the role of
vocabulary in reading comprehension is complex. The results of the
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Regional Language Centre Journal 39.1
NOTE
1. Students in the education system in Singapore have to sit the Primary School
Leaving Examinations (PSLE) and undergo a selection procedure upon graduation
from primary schools in order to qualify for a place in secondary schools. They are
placed in three streams: the best able cohort takes the four-year Academic Express or
Special Course (in cases where the students are strong in English and Higher Mother
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The Role of Vocabulary in Reading Comprehension
Tongue), and the less able are given the five-year Normal Academic Course, both of
whom are eligible to take the Cambridge-Singapore General Certificate of Education
at the Ordinary (O-Levels) and Normal (N-Levels) examinations respectively. Those
who do not perform well on the PSLE are given a Normal Technical Course which
prepares them with vocational training at the institutes of technical education (see
Cheah 2004; Gopinathan 2004, for more information).
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