The present study was conducted in the context of Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) 2000 research to conceptually validate the roles of breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension in academic settings and to empirically evaluate a test measuring three elements of the depth dimension of vocabulary knowledge, namely, synonymy, polysemy, and collocation. A vocabulary size measure and a TOEFL vocabulary measure were also tested. The study found that the dimension of vocabulary depth is as important as that of vocabulary size in predicting performance on academic reading and that scores on the three vocabulary measures tested are similarly useful in predicting performance on the reading comprehension measure used as the criterion. The study

This empirical study explored the relationships between depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension in English as a second language (ESL). Using multivariate analyses, the study examined the roles of depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge in assessing the performance of a group of young adult ESL learners with a minimum vocabulary size of 3,000 word families in carrying out general academic reading comprehension tasks. The results support the hypotheses that (1) scores on vocabulary size, depth of vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension are highly, and positively, correlated; and (2) scores on depth of vocabulary knowledge can make a unique contribution to the prediction of reading comprehension levels, in addition to the prediction afforded by vocabulary size scores. The findings from this study call for a recognition of the importance of improving depth of vocabulary knowledge in learners' ESL learning processes.

The central purpose of this study was to empirically evaluate an in-depth vocabulary knowledge measure in the context of developing the new TOEFL test. The study was carried out with a sample of 207 international students attending an intensive English as a second language (ESL) program in a major Canadian university, in order to determine whether this vocabulary knowledge measure could provide a basis for developing appropriate and useful item types for assessing test-takers’ reading comprehension. The results indicate that, compared with existing TOEFL vocabulary measures, the new measure has a similar difficulty level and provides a similar amount of prediction of test-takers’ reading performance.

This study explores conflicting views concerning the relative superiority of two approaches to learning a second language (L2) vocabulary: i.e., learning words in context and learning words out of context. The present study endeavoured to explore these two apparently related issues at the same time. It would have been ideal if the present study could have followed the framework of Seibert' s (1930) study, which also explored the two issues. However, Seibert' s paper does not provide sufficient information as to what kind of target words were used in the experiment ( e.g., whether they were associative words or non-associative words). Meanwhile, Anderson and Jordan's (1928) study provided much more detail, which is helpful in designing follow-up studies. The time frame of the Anderson and Jordan (1928) study, therefore, was used as a basis for designing the present study.

No abstract