The Impact of EFL StudentsVocabulary Breadth ofKnowledge on Literal Reading Comprehension.

Second language reading is a challenging task for foreign language learners. The amount of vocabulary students store in their brains will assist them in understanding reading, especially when studentsfirst language is a non - alphabetic language. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether EFL studentsvocabulary breadth knowledge influences their literal reading comprehension. To accomplish this study, the mixed methods design was used. All the participants in this study were given a set of tests which included Vocabulary Levels Test and Reading Comprehension Tests. Individual interviews were conducted after the quantitative phase and we re used as supportive data. The bivariateofregression analysis tools were used to interpret the correlations between vocabulary breadth knowledge within literal reading comprehension. The quantitative results indicated that vocabulary breadth ofknowledge was positively and significantly correlated to literal reading comprehension. The qualitative findings showed that the majority of participants agreed breadth of vocabulary knowledge played a greater role in their literal reading comprehension process. The interview results determined the participants relied more on breadth of vocabulary knowledge than others, for example syntactic knowledge, during literal reading. Moreover, the interviewees who had better language proficiency tended to utilize more lite racy skills in interpreting the content of reading passages than did lower language proficiency learners. Ultimately, the researcher hopes that the findings shown in this study will provide insight into the connection between EFL learnersvocabulary knowl edge and reading comprehension.

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