What Type of Vocabulary Knowledge Predicts Reading Comprehension: Word Meaning Recall or Word Meaning Recognition?

By B. Laufer, Tami Aviad-Levitzky. The Modern Language Journal, 2017

95 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study examined how well second language (L2) recall and recognition vocabulary tests correlated with a reading test, how well each vocabulary test discriminated between reading proficiency levels, and how accurate each test was in predicting reading proficiency when compared with corpus studies. A total of 116 college‐level learners of English as a foreign language took a reading test and 2 vocabulary size tests: meaning recall and meaning recognition. Participants were divided into 4 reading proficiency levels based on the reading scores. We correlated the reading scores with the 2 vocabulary scores, compared the 4 reading groups on each vocabulary test, and compared the vocabulary size of each of the reading proficiency groups with corpus studies. Both vocabulary tests were good predictors of reading, but the recognition test fared slightly better. We introduce the notion of ‘comprehension vocabulary’ and suggest that a recall test is more appropriate for measuring sight vocabulary while a recognition test is more appropriate for measuring comprehension vocabulary.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Developmental and Educational Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/91073f7621ac477a126e2546a5867427783f80ff

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Artificial Intelligence

1. Stuart Mclean
2. J. Stewart
3. A. Batty
4. Xian Zhang
5. Songshan Zhang
6. N. Schmitt
7. E. Peters
8. Stuart Webb

In Developmental and Educational Psychology

1. Stuart Mclean
2. Xian Zhang
3. J. Stewart
4. A. Batty
5. Songshan Zhang
6. N. Schmitt
7. E. Peters
8. Stuart Webb

Citations in the corpus

• The relationship between vocabulary knowledge and L2 reading/listening comprehension: A meta-analysis (2020, background): “Laufer and Aviad-Levitzky (2017) found that meaning recognition tests were better predictors of L2 reading comprehension as compared to meaning recall tests.”
• Understanding vocabulary acquisition, instruction, and assessment: A research agenda (2019, background): “Laufer and Aviad-Levitzky (2017) found that both meaning recognition and meaning recall vocabulary measures correlated with reading scores at .91–.92.”
• Predicting L2 reading proficiency with modalities of vocabulary knowledge: A bootstrapping approach (2020, background): “In the literature discussed here, test time was not controlled (Beglar & Hunt, 1999; Laufer & Aviad-Levitzky, 2017; Schmitt et al., 2001).”