Roles of Grammar and Vocabulary Knowledge in L2 Reading by English Proficiency Levels

Abstract

The purpose of the study aims to examine the roles of vocabulary and syntactical knowledge on L2 reading comprehension when learners' English proficiency levels were concerned. More specifically, the study investigates to what extent vocabulary and syntactic knowledge contributes to L2 reading comprehension regardless of learners' proficiency levels and whether lexical and syntactic knowledge makes differential contributions to L2 reading comprehension depending on learners' proficiency levels. To this end, 337(male: 153, female: 183) students attending two universities in Korea participated in this study. The participants took the tests in the same order: (1) a vocabulary levels test; (2) a vocabulary test; (3) a grammar test 1; (4) a grammar test 2; (5) a reading comprehension test; and (6) a recall task. A series of multiple regression analyses were conducted with SPSS 18.0 to mainly examine the research questions that set up. The results demonstrate that syntactic knowledge plays a stronger role than lexical knowledge regardless of the reading tasks. In addition, the study found that lexical and grammatical knowledge makes differential contributions in accordance with the participants’ proficiency levels. That is, grammatical knowledge, particularly grammar test 1, was shown to be a stronger predictor for high and intermediate proficient groups in performing both reading tasks. On the contrary, lexical knowledge was a stronger predictor for low proficient level students in both reading tasks. Implications are also discussed.