Investigating the Relationship Between Vocabulary Knowledge and FL Speaking Performance

Abstract

Research has highlighted the importance of vocabulary learning in order for L2 learners to cope with the linguistic demands of fundamental skills such as reading and listening. However, few empirical studies have investigated the relative strength of the association of a specific construct of vocabulary knowledge has on the skill of speaking. To understand more fully the practical implications of such a relationship, this paper presents empirical evidence gathered to explore a measure of productive vocabulary knowledge and the degree to which this measure correlates with and is able to predict speaking success. A cohort of 18 sophomore university learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Saudi Arabia (SA) completed the Productive Vocabulary Levels Test (PVLT), an oral interview and a speaking task. Test scores derived from PVLT were analyzed to produce a range of descriptive statistics, which underwent correlational analyses to determine the relationship between the measure of PVLT and speaking success. Analyses revealed a consistent pattern of declining scores from the highest to the least frequent word levels. A closer examination of the data showed that the participants’ success across the five-word levels of the PVLT showed better performance on the 2,000 and 3,000-word levels, in fact, the results indicated that only these word levels made a contribution to predicting speaking scores. Based on these findings, we draw implications for vocabulary teaching contexts and provide suggestions for future studies on vocabulary and speaking link.