Knowledge of Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension: An Important Relationship.

ABSTRACT If a student is to develop reading comprehension, he must possess and activate a number of linguistic and cognitive skills. He comes to the text with certain expectations and uses a cyclical process of sampling, predicting, testing, and confirming to understand it. The overall goal of reading instruction is to produce motivated, independent, fluent, and efficient readers. Researchers and teachers have devised a number of teaching strategies and exercises to promote good reading skills and lead to reading comprehension. They have particularly emphasized the strategy of contextual guessing using typographical, pictorial, syntactic, and semantic clues. Not all students are equally successful at learning new words, but use a variety of strategies based on individual preferences and learning styles. Research strongly suggests that knowledge of vocabulary and reading comprehension are positively correlated and that the systematic development of word identification skills will improve reading. However, fluent reading will only be acr;omplished through adequate, continuous practice. Foreign language teachers need to establish reading goals for their programs and follow a consistent plan including intensive and extensive reading from early in the instructional process. (MSE)