The Role of Vocabulary Knowledge in Reading Comprehension: A Cross-Linguistic Study

The purpose of the present cross-linguistic study was to find out the role of vocabulary knowledge of the language of the text on reading comprehension performance when reading texts in that language. The study involved 10 participants who were students of English as a foreign language (EFL) in a Malaysian public high school selected using the random sampling. The instruments for the study were a set of reading comprehension test and a set of vocabulary test for the selected EFL grade-level reading text and a set of reading comprehension test and a set of vocabulary test for the selected grade-level reading text in the participants’ native language. The tests were administered on an individual basis. Each participant was allowed to read the EFL text without time limit but to do the tests without looking back at the text within a specified duration for the reading comprehension and vocabulary tests. The same procedures were conducted for reading comprehension test and vocabulary in context test for the first language (L1) or native language text. A brief interview was conducted immediately after the participants had completed the reading comprehension and vocabulary in context tests for the EFL and L1 texts. The participants’ vocabulary test and reading comprehension were scored and the test scores for the EFL text and L1 text were compared. The findings show that the participants’ vocabulary test and reading comprehension test scores for the L1 text were significantly better than their scores for the EFL text. The results from the interviews indicate that the participants were lacked of vocabulary knowledge in the EFL in comparison to in their native language. The findings provide evidence that a reader's level of vocabulary knowledge is one of the elements that plays an impacting role in determining reading comprehension performance in that language.