Role of Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) in Chinese Undergraduate Students’ Comprehension of Textbooks

Abstract

Vocabulary knowledge has always been considered crucial in reading comprehension. This paper aims to link Chinese learners’ performance on Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) to the profiling of their textbook so as to draw pedagogical implications on English teaching. The participants were 108 freshmen in Jiangsu University of Technology, China. All of them took part in the VLT, and their English textbook was profiled to see the lexical level of the vocabulary. Results showed that 81.48% of the participants had mastered the 2,000-word level, and the vocabulary of the textbook was within the vocabulary knowledge of the participants. However, results also indicated that no participants had reached the mastery level of the K-3, K-5 and AWL words. Based on the findings of the research, it was suggested that the language teacher could make use of the textbook to consolidate the participants’ K-1 to K-2 words and at the same time give them more exposure to K-3 to K5 words as well as academic words by exposing them to some extra materials.