A Correlation Analysis on the Depth and Breadth of ESL Learners’ Vocabulary Knowledge and Their Overall Linguistic Competence

Abstract

The breadth and depth of ESL learners' vocabulary knowledge and their comprehensive linguistic competence are not well studied in current literatures on vocabulary studies. This paper explores the creditability of depth and breadth of ESL learners' vocabulary knowledge as an indicator of their overall linguistic competence and the correlation between depth and breadth of ESL learners' vocabulary knowledge. The results show that both the depth and breadth of ESL learners' vocabulary knowledge can effectively be representative of their linguistic competence, of which the depth of ESL learners' vocabulary knowledge is better than the breadth of their vocabulary knowledge as an indicator of their overall linguistic competence. In general, the breadth of ESL learners' vocabulary knowledge is highly positively correlated with the depth of their vocabulary knowledge but the development of depth of vocabulary knowledge still lags behind the development of breadth of vocabulary knowledge.