This paper was presented at the 2nd International FLLT2011 Conference.

1. 1 Relationship Between Vocabulary Size and Reading Comprehension Asst. Prof. Preawpan Pringprom, Ph. D Buppha Obchuae

2. 2 Background of Problem Inability to decode the meaning of words How many words do students know? Inability to guess from the context Inability to comprehend the written texts

3. 3 Research Objectives There are two main folds of this research objective: To find out the students’ vocabulary sizes To study the relationship between students’ vocabulary size and their English reading comprehension

4. 4 Research Questions

5. 5 Subjects Thirty first-year-students studying EN 111 in academic year 2010 at Bangkok University Research Instruments Vocabulary Level Test (Schmitt. N; Schmitt D & Clapham C (Nation, 2001: 416-420) Reading Comprehension Test

6. 6 Vocabulary Knowledge Two primary dimensions: Receptive vocabularyrefers to a learner’s ability to recognize a word and retrieve its meaning while listening or reading. Productive vocabulary refers to a learner’s ability to use a word to send a message or express his/her thought appropriately through speaking or writing (Nation, 2006: 24).

7. 7 Vocabulary Level Test (VLT) The bilingual version was based on the original version B of Norbert Schmitt, Diane Schmitt and Caroline Clapham (2001).

8. 8 Research Procedures 1st week of the course, the 2000, 3000, and 5000 VLT were administered at the beginning of class time. 2nd week of the course, the RCT was administered at the beginning of class time.

9. 9 Data Analysis Descriptive Statistic was used to find means and standard deviations of the VLT2000, VLT3000, and VLT5000. Pearson correlation was conducted to analyze the relationship between the subjects’ reading comprehension and their receptive vocabulary size.

11. 479 words out of 1000 at the 3000 frequency-words level

12. 310 words out of 1000 at the 5000 frequency-words level 10

13. 11 N = 30 The subjects’ VLT scoresdropped as the word-frequency levels decreased

14. 12 Average percentage scores on the VLT N = 30 At least 95% of text coverage is needed for successful guessing of the meaning of the unknown words (Liu and Nation, 1985). To reach 95% coverage of academic text, a vocabulary size of around 4000 word families is needed, consisting of 2000 high-frequency word, other academic words, technical words, proper nouns, and low frequency words.

15. 13 Individual’s Profile of Vocabulary

16. 14 Relationship Between Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary Size N = 30 r = 0.684; p = <.0.01 r = 0.779; p = <.0.01 r = 0.571; p = <.0.01

17. 15 Pedagogical Implications Vocabulary assessment and instruction should be an important part of every English course, especially at the beginning level. Vocabulary Strategies Activities Training Vocab Bookkeeping Word parts Word Families Vocabulary Dictation Prefix-Suffix-Roots

18. 16