The relative significance of syntactic knowledge and vocabulary breadth in                 the prediction of reading comprehension test performance

Shiotsu, Toshihiko; Weir, Cyril J.

doi:10.1177/0265532207071513

Cited by 157 publications

(178 citation statements)

References 23 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

157

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Conversely, there are still a considerable number of engineering students who need help in reading in Pakistan. A number of researchers have recognized engineering students' reading difficulty to vocabulary knowledge and recommended lexical education (Alderson, 2000;Mudray, 2006;Shiotsu & Weir, 2007;Ward, 2009). Liao and Chen (2012) suggested that if engineering university students want to equip themselves in their career development, suitable Science and technology materials need to be provided in the courses for reading practices.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reading Comprehension and Metacognitive Strategies in First Year Engineering University Students in Pakistan

Channa¹,

Abassi²,

John³

et al. 2018

IJEL

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The paper investigates the use of metacognitive strategies by first year engineering students at the time of classroom practice on reading text. The study was conducted in four engineering departments of a university in Pakistan. Data was collected through focus group interviews of first year engineering students. The researchers developed interview questions which were validated by two experts at university Malaysia Sarawak. Students were divided into 8 groups and each group had 5 informants. The data was recorded in audio-tape and organized gathered data through NVivo version 8 for interpretation of the results. The most important themes were generated through data analysis including thinking through images of the texts, selecting the main ideas, selecting the topic sentences, scanning of the texts, summarizing of the texts, and Questioning. The study contributed theoretically by giving the most promising results which showed that more than half of these groups used metacognitive strategies in classroom reading practice while less than half of groups did not use strategies and remained poor in reading comprehension. This study proposed to develop reading comprehension courses and syllabus based on reading strategies for engineering students.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reading Comprehension and Metacognitive Strategies in First Year Engineering University Students in Pakistan

Channa¹,

Abassi²,

John³

et al. 2018

IJEL

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, it is interesting to note that while this phenomenon does not seem to affect L1 readers to enhance RF through CRR at syntactic level (Rasinki, 2003), it might be more detrimental for FL readers. The difference between the RF performance in L1 and FL can be explained by the low vocabulary skills (Lervå g & Aukrust, 2009), poor syntactic knowledge (Shiotsu & Weir, 2007), or diminished cognitive resources of FL readers that are necessary to focus on both meaning and the form during CRR (i.e. attentional and short-term memory, see LaBerge & Samuels, 1974).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Review studies suggest that decoding skills develop faster than comprehension skills, and consequently, FL learners have significantly larger gaps between scores on RF and reading comprehension measures compared with L1 learners (Quirk & Beam, 2012;Reschly et al, 2009). The reason why FL learners lag behind their comprehension skills can be explained by the lack of vocabulary skills (Lervå g & Aukrust, 2009) or syntactic knowledge (Shiotsu & Weir, 2007). In a meta-analysis Melby- Lervag and Lervag (2014) showed that differences between L1 and FL learners are rather small at word decoding level, because of the higher transfer rate of linguistic skills from L1 to FL.…”

Section: Reading Fluency In a Flmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Choral Repeated Reading on Foreign Language Reading Fluency of Words in Connected and Disconnected Text

Dolean¹,

Damşa²,

Pop³

2017

IJL

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Repeated reading has been successfully used to enhance reading fluency in L1, but little is known about how (and to what extent) this strategy impacts reading in foreign language classrooms. Our paper reports the results of a 5-week intervention program aimed to improve reading fluency of middle school students during their English as a foreign language classes. Four classes of sixth-graders divided in two groups received two reading treatments for the last 15 minutes of the class: choral repeated reading (CRR) and reading comprehension/vocabulary development (RC/VD). Results indicated that a short term International Journal of Linguistics ISSN 1948-5425 2017 www.macrothink.org/ijl 11 intervention program of repeated reading can lead to significant improvements of fluency only at lexical level (words in disconnected text) but not at syntactic level (words in connected text). Pedagogical implications and further research directions are addressed.

show abstract

“…Originally designed as a diagnostic tool for teachers (Nation, 1983(Nation, , 1990, the VLT has now come to be used as a widely employed instrument amongst teachers and researchers alike to provide an estimate of vocabulary breadth of L2 language learners (Read, 1988;Cobb, 1997;Schmitt & Meara, 1997;Laufer & Paribakht, 1998;Shiotsu & Weir, 2007). However, this is not the intended use of this instrument.…”

Section: Pedagogical Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vocabulary Levels Test

Kremmel

Schmitt

2017

The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

subsequently revised by Schmitt, Schmitt, and Clapham in 2001. It is a tool to measure the written receptive vocabulary knowledge, that is mainly the word knowledge required for reading. The VLT assesses this knowledge of learners at four frequency levels of English word families: 2,000, 3,000, 5,000 and 10,000, hence the name "Levels Test." Versions of this test are available freely on the personal websites of Paul Nation (printable, http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/ paul-nation), Tom Cobb (printable and online, http://www.lextutor.ca/tests/), and Norbert Schmitt (printable, www.norbertschmitt.co.uk), the latter two providing the latest revised versions of the test . Versions of the test can also be found in Nation (1990), Schmitt (2000), and Schmitt (2010).Each section of the revised VLT consists of 30 items in a multiple matching format. Three items therefore represent 100 words of any particular frequency band. Items are clustered together in 10 groups for this, so that learners are presented in each cluster with six words in a column on the left and the corresponding meaning senses of three of these in another column on the right. Learners are asked to match each meaning sense in the right-hand column with one single word from the lefthand column. Thus, the test asks learners to recognize the form rather than the meaning, that is, the options are words instead of definitions (Schmitt, 2010). As such, the VLT taps the very basic and initial stages of form-meaning link learning. Example items from three of the levels can be seen in Figure 1.Each cluster targets three words, although some researchers have argued that knowledge of the meaning of the three distractor words is also tested as the test takers need to be familiar with them when they discard them (Read, 1988). Within each level, there is a fixed ratio of word classes to represent the distribution of English word classes. This ratio was 5 (noun) : 3 (verb) : 1 (adjective) in the initial

show abstract

The relative significance of syntactic knowledge and vocabulary breadth in the prediction of reading comprehension test performance

Cited by 157 publications

References 23 publications

Reading Comprehension and Metacognitive Strategies in First Year Engineering University Students in Pakistan

Reading Comprehension and Metacognitive Strategies in First Year Engineering University Students in Pakistan

The Effects of Choral Repeated Reading on Foreign Language Reading Fluency of Words in Connected and Disconnected Text

Vocabulary Levels Test

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About