The Mediating Roles of Gender and Academic Field in the Relationship between Vocabulary Knowledge and Reading Comprehension of EFL Students

Hamad H Alsowat

doi:10.13189/ujer.2022.100204

Abstract

This study examined the mediating roles of gender and academic field in the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. A vocabulary size test, a vocabulary depth test and the IELTS reading test were administered to 319 university-level students (54 males; 265 females) from three disciplines: medicine, science, and arts. The findings revealed that students had between 2000 and 3000 word families, low vocabulary depth (45.3%), and poor reading comprehension (52.4%). Besides, male students outperformed female students in all study variables. Meanwhile, medical students had superiority over science and arts students in Vocabulary Level Test (VLT) and reading comprehension. Vocabulary breadth and depth were significantly correlated with reading comprehension. The contribution of VLT and Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge (DVK) to reading comprehension differs depending on gender and academic field.

Highlights

Vocabulary plays a vital role in learning a foreign or a second language
The results revealed that academic field did not affect the participants' scores on Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge (DVK), while there were statistically significant differences in terms of Vocabulary Level Test (VLT) and the reading comprehension test
Regarding the relationship of reading comprehension to the components of vocabulary knowledge, the findings revealed that VLT, DVK, DVKM, and DVKC were significantly correlated with L2 reading comprehension

Summary

Introduction

Vocabulary plays a vital role in learning a foreign or a second language. Vocabulary knowledge comprised at least two dimensions: vocabulary breadth and vocabulary depth. Vocabulary knowledge helps learners comprehend written texts, and reading contributes to vocabulary growth [14], [53]. Students with inadequate vocabulary face difficulties comprehending the written texts, which negatively affects their academic performance. Many of them face severe difficulties reading and comprehending written texts due to the little interest in reading in English [49], problems in comprehending the texts and insufficient vocabulary size [67], ambiguous words, and unfamiliar vocabulary [33], [48]. The updated Vocabulary Level Test [76] was adopted to measure vocabulary size. The updated VLT was chosen due to the time constraint and because most Saudi college students' average vocabulary size is below 3000-word families [9], [12]. The updated VLT consisted of five levels measuring the receptive vocabulary knowledge at 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, and 5000 levels. An example from the 2000 word level was presented in table 1

Methods

Results

Conclusion