The Relationship between Depth and Breadth of Vocabulary Knowledge and Reading Comprehension among Iranian EFL Learners By

The current study is an attempt to investigate the particular role learnersvocabulary knowledge plays in their reading comprehension performance. Itintends to determine whether breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge arerelated to EFL learner's reading comprehension, and to investigate which oneof these variables, that is, depth or breadth of vocabulary knowledge, makes amore important contribution to L2 reading comprehension. It also attempts toinvestigate whether there is a relationship between these two vocabularyknowledge dimensions, that is, depth and breadth. Finally, the study tries tofind out whether gender has any effect on learner's reading comprehensionand vocabulary knowledge. The participants of the study were sixty (30 maleand 30 female) EFL learners who were chosen from among five languageteaching institutes in Shiraz based on available sampling. To collect therelevant data, two tests measuring breadth and depth of vocabularyknowledge were administered to all participants. They also received a readingcomprehension test in which they were asked to read the passages and answersome multiple choice questions. The results obtained from the analysis of thedata indicated that while both depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledgeplay an important role in EFL learner's reading comprehension performance,depth of vocabulary knowledge makes a more important contribution. Theresults further revealed that depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge arepositively correlated, that is, those learners who had large vocabulary sizehad a deeper knowledge of the words, too. It was also found that gender hadno significant impact on learner's reading comprehension performance andvocabulary knowledge.