The Relationship Between Lexis and Reading Comprehension: A Review

Abstract

It has been commonly reported by teachers and learners the strong and positive relationship between lexis and reading comprehension. This claim has been usually grounded on experience. In consequence, this paper attempts to find research-based evidence to support the connection between lexis and reading comprehension. To do this, a review of 128 studies was conducted using a set of criteria, after which thirteen studies were selected and screened to look for specific patterns. Salient themes emerged from the analysis: lexical coverage, direct instruction, lexical knowledge (breadth and depth), incidental and intentional learning and receptive and productive lexical knowledge. The analysis supports the connection between lexis and reading comprehension not only in EFL, but also in ESL and L1 contexts. In line with it, the research suggests that teachers should focus on systematic lexis instruction since it aids learners to increase both lexical knowledge and reading comprehension gains.

Word Recognition and Reading Skills to Improve Reading Comprehension

“…Similarly, in another finding it was evidenced that students may achieve the basic knowledge of lexical size to obtain an in-depth reading comprehension (Rosado & Caro, 2018). Maximo argued that researchers believed that devoting a lot of time to learn vocabulary is essential to master a language (as cited in Mofareh, 2015).…”

“…and Rosado and Caro (2018) stated in their study, the fundamental role of vocabulary to booster reading comprehension, the bigger range of vocabulary they possess the better for deeper text's comprehension. These findings match some author's conclusions that vocabulary size contributes to reading comprehension (Gunobgunob-Mirasol, 2019;Kieffer & Lesaux, 2012;Laufer & Ravenhorst-Kalovski, 2010;Shahar-Yames & Prior, 2018;Snow, 2002).…”

Assessing the Effects of Teaching Vocabulary in Developing Receptive Skills: A Review Article

“…Also, Nagy (as cited in Kuleli & Sen, 2015) agreed that vocabulary is essential to understand various texts and that vocabulary teaching should be an integral part of language education. Besides, Rosado and Caro (2018) agreed that lexis and reading comprehension are closely related, so I support his view that there is a close relationship between lexis and reading comprehension. If the learner of a language knows the lexis semantically and syntactically, there will be no problem in the part of comprehension (semantic) and its structure (syntactic).…”

Comprensión lectora en universitarios: comparativo por áreas de conocimiento

“…En términos generales, muchos de los estudiantes mostraron pocas habilidades para sustentar opiniones. Se comprobó cómo el poco conocimiento lingüístico o del significado de las palabras se vuelve un obstáculo relevante para la comprensión lectora (Carlino, 2013;Harmon y Wood, 2018;Kameli y Baki, 2013;Kintsch, 1998;Rosado y Caro, 2018), independientemente si es un texto en formato digital o impreso. Al igual que Flores-Carrasco et al ( 2017), observamos la necesidad de fortalecer la comprensión de textos en soporte digital en forma paralela a la comprensión de texto impreso.…”