The Relationship between L2 LearnerʹʹsBreadth of Vocabulary Knowledge,Lexical Inferencing Strategy Use and Their Success in Reading Comprehension

The present study aims to investigate the relationship between breadth of vocabulary knowledge, lexical inferencing strategy use and success in reading comprehension. The participants of this study were fifty graduate students, majoring in teaching English at the universities of Najaf Abad and khorasgan who had reached the lexical threshold level for reading comprehension, i.e., 3,000 word families or better as was measured by Schmitt (2001) Vocabulary Level Test. To collect the relevant data, participants were asked to take part in two language tests, Schmittʹs (2001) Vocabulary Level Test, and a test of reading comprehension and one session interview for knowing what types of lexical inferencing strategies were commonly used by learners. Using multivariate analyses, the study examined the relationship between breadth of vocabulary knowledge, lexical inferencing strategy use and reading comprehension success. The results indicated that (1) there were a significant relationship between the scores of reading comprehension and breadth of vocabulary knowledge and (2) breadth of vocabulary knowledge and lexical inferencing strategies were correlated (3) encountering unknown words many of the learners use different types of strategies to find the meaning. The results from this study call for a recognition of the importance of improving vocabulary knowledge for EFL learners, teachers, test designers and material developers.