Engineering EFL learners‟ Vocabulary Depth Knowledge and Its Relationship and Prediction to Academic Reading Comprehension

An in-depth investigation of depth of vocabulary knowledge by the lexical researchers occupies indeed a prominent position in language learning and teaching. In order to achieve that, using an adapted morphological test and an analytic relations test, this study investigated knowledge of vocabulary depth of English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners and its association and prediction tithe learners’ academic reading success. Results showed that not only syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations, which represented depth of vocabulary knowledge test had the most significant positive association with academic reading comprehension but also more importantly, vocabulary depth was found to be the strongest unique predictor of academic reading performance. In addition, derivative forms of words, represented morphological knowledge did not lag behind building significant positive association with reading skill and contributing to predicting to academic reading comprehension. The results of the study suggested that those students who gained depth of vocabulary knowledge, represented by both paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations performed better than morphological (derivative forms of words) knowledge and analytic (meronymy) relations. To conclude, moreover, the results of the current study also signified a unique and significant effect of depth of vocabulary knowledge on academic reading comprehension.

Keywords – Academic Reading Comprehension, Analytic Relations, Prediction, VocabularyDepth Knowledge