The effect of reading comprehension on improving students‟ vocabulary In terms of quantity and complexity

1. The effect of reading comprehension on improving students‟ vocabulary
In terms of quantity and complexity
SLA MPB1313
Prof. KhairiIzwan Abdullah
EhsanAtaei MP101459
Elmira Daneshpour MP 111059
Shivan Mawlood Hussein MP111020
Turnitin plagiarism checked %
Faculty of Education
University Technology Malaysia
May 2012

2. CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.0 Introduction
According to Grabe (1991), Vocabulary knowledge as an active feature of language has an
important role in improving language skills. Therefore, improving of vocabulary knowledge
draws attention of many researchers in second and foreign language acquisition.
Recent findings suggest that reading comprehension is an appropriate method in teaching
vocabulary in a case many language teacher and language learners complain about direct
teaching of vocabulary. (Anderson and Freebody, 1981)
Vocabulary size and complexity are considered as a main issue among language learners. As
a result teachers try to find out effective methods for enhancing vocabulary in terms of quantity
and complexity. (Nation & Waring, 1997)Traditional methods of teaching vocabulary were not
successful. List of words, using pictures and word translation were the main aspects of teaching
vocabulary which are considered as a boring ways of teaching.
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3. 1.1 Statement of problem
Learning vocabulary is considered as an important and influential factor in language
learning or acquisition. Students face with so many difficulties in learning vocabulary. There are
so many strategies in learning vocabulary and there is not any specific way to make learners sure
that they will have improvement in their vocabulary learning. Some of the classes focus on direct
teaching of vocabulary while our study is focus on indirect teaching of vocabulary through
reading. Learning vocabulary can help students‟ language competence which contains four skills
input and output.
1.2 Purpose of study
This study aims to find the relationship between reading comprehension and any
improvement in learners‟ writing in their vocabulary size and complexity. Moreover, the
researchers look for the role of summarizing as a study skill more than reading comprehension
on the learners‟ improvement in vocabulary size and complexity.
From theoretical perspective and based on Krashen (1982) input hypothesis
comprehensible input is enough for language acquisition. This study tests this idea in reading
comprehension, beside output hypothesis by swain (2007) which focuses on output and
productive skills like writing. It is expected to find a relationship between reading
comprehension and some strategies like summarizing with learners competence and performance
in writing a text based on those readings.
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4. 1.3 Objectives of the Study
i. To investigate the relationship between comprehension reading and learning
vocabulary
ii. To find out whether a text summarizing increase vocabulary in use in terms of
complexity
iii. To find out whether a text summarizing increase vocabulary in use in terms of
quantity
1.4 Research Questions
The relation between comprehension reading and learning vocabulary
1. Is there any relationship between reading comprehension and learning vocabulary?
2. Does reading comprehension with and without text summarizing increase students
vocabulary in use in terms of complexity?
3. Does reading comprehension with and without text summarizing increase students
vocabulary in use in terms of quantity?
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5. CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.0 Introduction
In this chapter comprehension reading, vocabulary in terms of size and complexity beside
text summarization and Styles of counting vocabulary were reviewed in order to find a basis for
data collection and analysis.
2.1 Reading Comprehension
Nation (1990) identified that after learning high frequency words, the teacher help the
students to improve strategies of reading comprehension and then learn low frequency words.
The reading comprehension strategies are included:
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6. 1. Guessing from context
2. Using word parts and mnemonic techniques to remember words
3. Using vocabulary cards to remember foreign language
There is a strong connection between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension
crossways all age on entrance associates and proficiency levels of learners.(Verhoeven, 2000;
Nassaji, 2003 ; Roessingh, 2008)
Jitendra, Edwards, Sacks and Jacobson (2004) knowledge of vocabulary can increase
reading comprehension and it provides a justification of sound for improved focus on vocabulary
instruction.
Duke and Pearson (2002) said that reading a new text is a very good method for student
to imagine the text and think about new words and also encourage them to guess the meaning of
words from text, they compare new words with their previous knowledge (words), so this way
help them in comprehension.
Klinger and Vaughn (1996) stated explicit vocabulary improving reading comprehension
in first language and second language, reading comprehension strategies in both languages
should be taught.
2.2 Vocabulary Size
Carrol, Davies and Richardman (1971) indicated that it does not needed to know all the
words but if knowing can be a very successful for language users, they believed that learners
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7. should increase their vocabulary size. To read some texts that contain unknown vocabulary,
native speakers need to know around 15,000 to 20,000 word families.
Nation (2001) mentioned that to understand better about depth of vocabulary, it is
important to know so many things about a word to use, and knowing different degrees of words.
According to Nation vocabulary knowledge divided to productive and receptive which refers to
active and passive vocabulary. Nation (1993: 125) “the more sensible estimates indicate that
adult native speakers of English with a tertiary education have a vocabulary size around 20,000
word families. Most of this is made up of low frequency words. These words are learned through
diverse and wide-ranging contact with the language”.
A good explanation for vocabulary size is around 20,000 words as a normal size that each
person should know. English speaker (native speaker) knows 1000 words more than the others.
Students who are in elementary school will know vocabulary around 4000 to 5000 words,
otherwise the vocabulary size for university student is around 20,000 words. ( Goulden, Nation
& Read, 1990). On the other hand D'Anna, Zechmeister and Hall (1991) believed that
vocabulary size is depend on items that are incorporated and in which way a word family is
definite.
2.2.1 Vocabulary size and text coverage in the Brown corpus:
Vocabulary size Text coverage
1000 72.0%
2000 79.7%
3000 84.0%
4000 86.8%
5000 88.7%
6000 89.9%
15,851 97.8%
Table 2.1
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8. Table 2.1 indicates the relationship between vocabulary size and written texts. The last
line is indicated 15,000 words can cover 95 % of the running words of their corpus. On the other
side the table shows that before knowing high frequency words we know lower frequency words.
It means that knowing around 1000 words cover 70% written text and in each line we have two
unknown words. ( Francis & Kucera, 1982)
Heath (1985) stated that this vocabulary size is not sufficient to guess the meaning of
unknown words. As Nation (2001) believed that vocabulary size should cover around 95% of
written text to guess the meaning of unknown words.
Biber(1990) explained how particular language characteristics cluster in particular text
types refers to studies of corpus. So the spoken and written corpora that used should coat a series
of representative kinds of text.
2.3 Vocabulary Complexity
Academic texts contain low frequency words which are not known by many readers
because readers rarely encounter these words in their text readings. According to Waring and
Nation (2004), for acquiring public texts or academic texts readers need a massive amount of
vocabulary So as to comprehend the texts.
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9. Sutarsyah, Nation and Kennedy (1994) said academic texts which contain various topics
are not easily covered by readers because they contain a lot of academic words which are
familiar by a few of readers; this makes the texts difficult to be understood.
2.4 Text summarization
Jones, Hovy, Lin, Mani and Maybury (1999) clarified three specific stages of text
summarization:
1. Identify topic: define what topic is and what main purpose of text is.
2. Interpretation: clarify concepts and meaning of abstract, some part that we cannot find
in original text.
3. Generation of summary: paraphrase the text and break parts into a coherent (text
planning).
2.5 Styles of counting vocabulary
2.5.1 Tokens
Token means counting all words in a text includes repeated words and it considered as a
most simple style of counting words. Token does not focus on word patterns or derivations.
(Nation, 2001)
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10. 2.5.2 Types
Vocabulary type is the most common style of counting vocabulary. Many researchers
follow this style for counting words in texts. Type style means counting all words excluding the
iterated words. Word patterns are dealt as a different kind of the words. (Schmitt ,2000)
2.5.3 Academic word families
Coxhead (2000) mentioned Academic word families are a kind style of calculating
words. All derivations, affixed, suffixes and heads are dealt as the same type of academic word
family. Academic word families are the most difficult method of counting words. The readers
usually get confuse in counting academic word families because they should return all the words
into the original heads so as to know whether they are belong to the same word families or not.
Coxhead and Nation (2001) stated that one of the most important elements for reading
comprehension is knowledge of passive vocabulary. Reading comprehension and academic
success have mutual relationship.
2.6 Reading comprehension and vocabulary learning
Schmitt (2000) said being able to understand a word is known as receptive knowledge
and is normally related with reading.
Nation (2001) confirmed that language learners can recall the meaning of words and add
them to their vocabulary knowledge while reading them. This knowledge can be in the form of
active or passive vocabulary. Chall (1987) found the similar idea and said proficient reader can
use reading to learn new vocabulary .teachers should use different approaches toward reading in
order to improve the size learners‟ vocabulary knowledge.
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11. CHAPTER III
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.0 Introduction
In order to find an appropriate answer for research questions about the effect of reading
comprehension on improving students‟ vocabulary in terms of quantity and complexity pre and
post writing with special treatment was designed by researchers.
3.1 Research Design
A quantitative design has been chosen in accordance with objectives of this study.
Participants write an article and after treatment they need to write another article with the same
topic. A comparison between these two articles has shown the results of this study.
3.2 Participants of the Study
The participants in the study were 6 UTM Master Students who were joined in this study
voluntarily and by random. Participants were in mixed gender and their age ranged between 25
to 31 years old. Before the main study students were divided to low and high level in terms of
their language proficiency based on their pre-writings.
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12. 3.1 Instrument
Web VP V.3 or vocabulary profiler (Cobb, 2010a) has chosen as an instrument of this
study. It is online software; check the texts vocabulary frequencies and types and it was adapted
from vocabulary profiling concept. (Laufer and Nations, 1995)
Figure 3.1. VP software environment
It generates a report about types of words, total number of words in the text (tokens) and
some other lexical items. West (1953) mentioned about a list of lexical frequency called general
service list (GSL), Web VP classic compare the taken words with GSL and also with another list
by Coxhead (2000) called academic word list(AWL). Moreover, the software gave a report
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13. about K1 which is the first 1000 words covered by the texts and also K2 which is the second
1000 words covered by the texts related to GSL.
3.1.1 Data Collection Methods
3.4.1 Pre- and post-writing
The pre- and post-writing required the subjects to write short narrative essays of Approximately
minimum 100 words within 60 minutes on one the following topics.
1. Friend in needs is a friend in deed.
2. The role of Mother or parents in your life.
3. Importance of technology in life
This pre-writings have done to evaluate students‟ vocabulary knowledge in terms of quantity
and complexity before the treatment. The post-writings have done to check the same items. The
conclusion has done based on the comparison between pre and post writing evaluation. This
evaluation has done by Web VP v3.
3.5 Data Collection Procedure
The Data collection had been taken in 2 weeks as follows:
Step 1 Pre-writing based on one topic among three selected topics ( All Participants )
Step 2 Students are divided into two groups based on the number of the words
higher than the mean of all the pre writing texts to find participants
vocabulary level ( ULTG and LLTG) upper level than mean group and lower
level than mean group)
Step 3 Groups subdivide into control and experimental groups randomly
Step 4 Reading a Reading and summarizing a relevant text ( Experimental group)
Treatment Text Just Reading a text (Control group)
Step 5 Post-writing based on vocabulary and knowledge attained from treatment
Step 6 Data about frequency and complexity of the texts were collected by Web VP
software v3
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14. 3.6 Data analysis
Descriptive analysis have done by based on the comparison in means in both groups has
shown the answers to the research questions. K1, K2 AWL, off list words tokens and some
specific items related to vocabulary frequency and complexity were analyzed by Vocab profiler
v.3. Quantitative data helped researchers to compare pre-writings and post-writings and answer
to the research questions perfectly.
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15. CHAPTER IV
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
4.0 Data analysis
The is chapter shows and compares the result of both experimental and control groups so
as to answer research questions which include the possible relationship between reading
comprehension and learning vocabulary. In addition, to answer whether reading comprehension
with summarizing improves learners‟ vocabulary knowledge in terms of size and complexity.
Furthermore, in order to show whether reading comprehension without summarizing develops
learners‟ vocabulary recognition in terms of size and complexity or not all data were collected.
4.1 Findings and Discussion
Regarding to the procedure in methodology, participants were asked to have pre-writing
and post writing. The results present the differences between experimental and control groups for
answering the research questions.
Two essays as pre-writing and post writing were written by participants. The words in
both pre-essay and post essay writings were counted based on types of the words. The results of
both writings include number, mean and total of words base on Types, words belong to 1-1000
types word families , words belong to 1001-2000 types word families, academic word families in
addition to off-list words are indicated in table 4.1. A and Table 4.1.B
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16. Number of words of 1-1000 types 1001-2000 types Academic words OFF. LIST
Types word families word families
J 96 84 6 2 4
E 87 78 6 2 1
A 106 86 8 7 5
H 91 68 13 3 7
M 92 85 4 2 1
M 130 95 10 14 11
Total 602 496 47 30 29
Mean 100.3 82.7 7.8 5 4.8
Table 4.1 A- The result of pre-writing before Reading
Number of words of 1-1000 types 1001-2000 types Academic words OFF. LIST
Types word families word families
J2 95 85 5 2 3
E2 96 81 4 6 5
A2 126 107 6 4 9
H2 101 57 17 11 16
M2 76 70 2 3 1
S2 152 109 16 17 10
Total 646 509 50 43 44
Mean 107.7 84.8 8.3 7.17 7.3
Table 4.1- B. The result of post writing after writing
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17. mean Number of words 1-1000 types 1001-2000 types Academic words OFF. LIST
of Types word families word families
Pre- writing 100.3 82.7 7.8 5 4.8
Post writing 107.7 84.8 8.3 7.17 7.3
discrepancy +7.4 +2.1 +0.5 +2.17 +2.5
Table 4.1 C- The discrepancy of mean (In each part)
As demonstrated in Table 4.1 A,B and C the Means of all parts are positively increased
especially in the Number of words which the difference is +7.4 while the difference between
Means in 1001-2000 types word families in Pre- writing and Post writing is is +0.5 which is not
significantly increased. The results indicate that there is a positive relation between reading
comprehension and vocabulary knowledge development. The result of this study is similar to
findings of researchers such as Verhoeven (2000), Nassaji (2003), and Roessingh (2008),
Jitendra, et al (2004) who found that there is a connection between reading comprehension and
progressing learners‟ levels of vocabulary knowledge.
The pre-writing and post writing of both experimental and control groups were purposely
taken from participants are shown in the table 4.2.2 so as to identify whether comprehension
reading with an without summarizing improve learners‟ vocabulary in terms of size.
Groups Number of words of Type Number of words of Type Difference
in pre-writing in post-writing
J 96 95 -1
experimenta
H 91 101 +10
S 130 152 +22
l
MEAN 105.7 116 +10.3
A 106 126 +20
control
E 87 96 +9
M 92 76 -9
MEAN 95 99.3 +4.3
Table 4.2 result of both experimental and control group in pre-writing and post writing
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18. In the light of the results in the table 4.2, the size of words in both experimental and
control groups developed. The Means in both experimental and control groups are increased
which means reading comprehension with and without summarizing improve learners‟
vocabulary size. Furthermore, the size of words in experimental group more developed
comparing to control group. The difference between Means in pre-writing and post writing in
experimental group is +10.3 while the disciplinary in Means in control group in pre-writing and
post writing is +4.3 which indicates that reading comprehension with summarizing is more
effective than reading comprehension without summarizing. Duke and Pearson (2002)
maintained that there is an association between reading and learners‟ vocabulary size which is
parallel to our findings.
For answering whether text reading perception with or without summarizing helps in
developing learners‟ vocabulary knowledge in terms of complexity, the results of pre-writing
and post writing have been concluded in the following tables.
1-1000 types word families 1-1000 types word Difference
in pre- writing families in post-writing
J 84 85 +1
H 68 57 -11
S 95 109 +14
TOTA 247 251
L
MEAN 82.3 83.7 +1.4
A 86 107 +21
E 78 81 +3
M 85 70 -15
TOTA 249 258
L
MEAN 83 86 +3
Table 4.3 Improvement of vocabulary in the 1-1000 types word families
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19. 1001-2000 types word 1001-2000 types word Difference
families in pre-writing families in post-writing
J 6 5 -1
H 13 17 +5
S 10 16 +6
TOTAL 29 38
MEAN 9.7 12.7 +3
A 8 6 -2
E 6 4 +2
M 4 2 +2
TOTAL 18 12
MEAN 6 4 +2
Table 4.3 B improvement of vocabulary in the 1001-2000 types word families
Academic words in Academic words in post Difference
pre-writing writing
J 2 2 0
H 3 11 +8
S 14 17 +3
TOTAL 19 30
MEAN 6.3 10 +3.7
A 7 4 +4
E 2 6 +4
M 2 3 +1
TOTAL 11 13
MEAN 3.7 4.3 +0.6
Table 4.3 C improvement of vocabulary in the Academic words
Based on the results appear in table 4.3 A,B and c reading comprehension with
summarizing is more effective in enhancing vocabulary knowledge in terms of complexity
especially in Academic words and the 1001-2000 types word families in contrast to the 1001-
2000 types word families. The Mean Academic words significantly increased which is +3.7, and
likewise the Mean in 1001-2000 types‟ word families obviously increased comparing to 1001-
2000 types word families‟ Mean which raised +1.4. On the other hand, reading comprehension
without summarizing is more beneficial to develop vocabulary knowledge in the 1001-2000
types word families. The tables shows that the Mean of reading comprehension without
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20. summarizing which means control group sharply raised in comparison to the Mean both of
academic words which is +0.6 and the 1001-2000 types word families which is +2 are
increased in ineffective way.
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21. CHAPTER V
CONCLUSIONS
5.1 Pedagogical Implication
Based on study results in chapter four, Researchers can provide some pedagogical
implications to teachers and syllabus designer to include readingcomprehension in language
classes in order to increase learners‟ vocabulary knowledge. And give extra reading
comprehension to learners who are weak in vocabulary.
The second pedagogy is instructors are advices to ask summary of the text after reading
comprehension for improving learners vocabulary in terms of quantity because base on our
findings reading comprehension has a positive effect of students vocabulary size in addition to
other benefits.
The other pedagogy is that learners who face difficulties in learning vocabulary
knowledge in terms of complexity should provide with reading comprehension without
summarizing because reading comprehension without summarizing helps learners to be fluent
and fast and encounter complex more time and learn them effectively.
5.2 Limitation
This study like other studies is not free of limitation. One of the limitations is number of
the participants because more participants make the result more reliable and accurate to the real
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22. sample. The other limitation is related to the learners‟ differences in vocabulary and reading
competence. Gender and age can be considered as a secondary limitation in this study which has
some effects on the study results. Time of reading is another limitation of this study. Students
with more reading comprehension can be developed in their vocabulary knowledge. The
limitation of facility of providing suitable texts has negative effect on the results.
5.3 Suggestion for further study
This study focused on the types of the word in terms of complexity and size. It is
recommended to other researchers to focus on frequency of the word in the text in improving
vocabulary knowledge. In addition, other researchers are recommended to focuses on the other
part of words such as word families and token words. This research suggested that further
researchers should include more scales and larger number of participants.
5.4 Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be said vocabulary is one of the most aspects in language learning
because it affects other language skills like writing. Based on this study results, reading
comprehension is an effective strategy for improving vocabulary in and outside of classrooms.
Summarizing after reading comprehension has an influence on learning vocabulary especially for
the purpose of size of the words.
Language classes should use reading comprehension as a supplementary strategy or task
for improving other skills in language learning because language classes mostly depend on
reading regardless whether is comprehensible or not
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