Korean High School Students’ Vocabulary Knowledge, Inferencing Abilities, and Reading Comprehension Abilities

cho Hye-Eun (조혜은)

Korean High School Students’ Vocabulary Knowledge, Inferencing Abilities, and Reading Comprehension Abilities

Modern English Education
Abbr : MEESO
2011, 12(4), pp.90-106
Publisher : The Modern English Education Society
Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Language Teaching

cho Hye-Eun ¹

¹고려대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The study investigates the relationship among students’ general vocabulary knowledge, their local and global inferencing abilities, and their reading comprehension abilities. It used quantitative methods of analysis to investigate what factors have a significant effect on the reading comprehension abilities of 32 Korean first grade high school students. To assess students’ vocabulary knowledge, local and global inferencing abilities, and reading comprehension abilities, PPVT (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test), a pseudo-word meaning inferencing tool, and KPSAT (Korea PreliminaryScholastic Aptitude Test) inferencing test items, and KPSAT reading comprehension test scores were used. The findings showed that vocabulary knowledge, local and global inferencing abilities, and reading comprehension abilities had a statistically significant correlation. In spite of the significant relationship, vocabulary knowledge did not have the strongest relationship with students’ reading comprehension abilities. Simple regression analyses showed that vocabulary knowledge, local and global inferencing abilities explained reading comprehension abilities when other variables were not controlled. However, the predictive power of vocabulary knowledge was lost when local and global inferencing abilities were controlled. Different predictors of Korean high school students’ reading comprehension abilities based on their English proficiency were shown in this study. Some pedagogical implications are suggested.

KEYWORDS

general vocabulary knowledge, inferencing abilities, predictor of reading, comprehension abilities

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

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