Factors associated with good comprehension: vocabulary
Good vocabulary skills are important for comprehension of sentences and text. Reading and language comprehension requires that readers have lexical knowledge (that is, knowledge about words) that can be retrieved quickly and used flexibly to derive appropriate contextual meaning. Research shows a strong association between word knowledge and text comprehension skill.
Carroll, J. B. (1993) Human cognitive abilities: A survey of factor-analytic studies. New York: Cambridge University Press.
One reason for this strong relationship is that rich knowledge of word meanings enables readers and listeners to make inferences. Knowledge of a word extends to connections with its related terms, and these associations between words are often helpful in making thematic links in a text. For example, by drawing on vocabulary knowledge about the likely things we bake for parties, particularly birthday parties, we can relate the meanings of the following two sentences rather than understanding them in isolation:
'She was baking for the birthday party. The cake was a chocolate sponge.'
The relationship between vocabulary and reading comprehension is two-way: they support each other. Written text contains a wealth of rare, less familiar words compared with conversation. For example, the words display, infinite, and literal are more often found in samples of written language.
Cunningham, A. E. and Stanovich, K. E. (1998) ‘What reading does for the mind’, American Educator, 22, pp. 8–15.
The range of language used in written text means that reading is a good way of expanding vocabulary knowledge, because it affords more opportunities to learn new words than conversation does. A large-scale, statistical review of 99 research studies confirmed that exposure to print (an index of frequency of leisure time reading or being read to) for pre-readers, young children and adults is a powerful predictor of vocabulary skills (and other critical literacy skills such as word recognition, spelling, and comprehension).
Mol, S. E. and Bus, A. G. (2011) ‘To read or not to read: A meta-analysis of print exposure from infancy to early adulthood’, Psychological Bulletin, 137, pp. 267–296.
Thus, reading to pre-readers and developing positive attitudes to reading in young children will enable them to develop literacy-related skills and to acquire knowledge throughout their lifetime.
However, the skills that the child (or adult) brings to reading will also affect their ability to learn new word meanings. Children with good reading comprehension and inference-making skills are better able to derive the meanings of new words from supportive contexts than their peers. An example of this comes from a study by Cain, Oakhill and Lemmon (2004). Children read short texts that contained clues to the meanings of unfamiliar words. An example is provided in the following text:
'The friendly giant was very tall. He always slept on a stansert. It was the right length for him. When he lay down, he sank right into the mattress. When the giant was asleep, he dreamed of beanstalks.'
The context supports the reader to work out the meaning of the unfamiliar word ‘stansert’, meaning ‘a long soft bed’ here.
Cain, K., Oakhill, J. and Lemmon, K. (2004) ‘Individual differences in the inference of word meanings from context: the influence of reading comprehension, vocabulary knowledge, and memory capacity’, Journal of Educational Psychology, 96, pp. 671–681.
Morphology concerns the structure of words. Clues within words themselves can also help readers to understand new and less familiar words. For example, if a child knows the meaning of develop (as a verb), they will be better placed to understand words related to that root such as development, developing, underdeveloped, etc.
Biemiller, A. and Slonim, N. (2001)’ Estimating root word vocabulary growth in normative and advantaged populations: Evidence for a common sequence of vocabulary acquisition’, Journal of Educational Psychology, 93, pp. 498–520.
Knowledge of morphology is related to children’s development of reading comprehension in the early years of reading.
Tong, X., Deacon, S. H., Kirby, J. R., Cain, K. and Parrila, R. (2011) ‘Morphological awareness: A key to understanding poor reading comprehension in English’, Journal of Educational Psychology, 103, pp. 523–534.
In conclusion, the research on vocabulary and reading shows that by developing their positive reading habits, good comprehension skills, and also good knowledge of morphology, we can provide children with the skills to develop their vocabulary knowledge, which will in turn support their understanding of the texts they read.