Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study
English is a compulsory course in the majority of elementary, middle, highschools and colleges in China. The level of English proficiency possibly decideswhether a language learner be able to find a well-paying job or not to some extent. Asone of the most significant communicative language skills, English readingcomprehension has attracted a lot of attention by researchers and linguists. The factorswhich contribute to reading comprehension for L2 (second language) learners are ofinterest to educators and researchers.Reading comprehension is an irreplaceable skill among the four basic skillsincluding listening, speaking, reading and writing in English learning and teaching. AsAnderson (2000) puts it: “Reading is an essential skill for English as a secondlanguage learner and reading is the most important skill to master”. Reading is one ofthe most important means to acquire knowledge and information. By interaction withthe words or symbols, a cognitive process takes place in readers’ mind. Readingcomprehension makes contributes to readers’ logical thinking ability and bettercommand of English.However in a matter of fact, as English major students, their reading abilitydoesn't conform to the level which English standard asks for. Reading is not only acomplex cognitive activity, but also a process of emotion and consciousness. Thereare a range of factors which affect reading comprehension, among which vocabularyknowledge, time limitation, psychology, meta-cognition, background knowledge,skills of reading are essential ones.
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1.2 Significance of the Study
Theoretically, Perfetti’ Lexical Quality Hypothesis (2007) is a usefulperspective on vocabulary development by specifying the word features thatcharacterize high-quality entries in a reader’s mental dictionary, or lexicon. The wordfeatures which characterize high-quality entries are semantic (meaning) representation,orthographic representation, and phonetic representation. This study intends toexplore the correlation between English majors’ Lexical Quality and readingcomprehension proficiency on the basis of Lexical Quality Hypothesis and previousstudies. The present study not only makes an effort to explore the correlation betweenEnglish majors’ Lexical Quality and reading comprehension proficiency but also findout the most correlative representational property. This study could provides a newangle for vocabulary learning and teaching in reading comprehension class and somesuggestions for lexicon class.Practically, L2 learners can aware of the extend to which limitations in theirlexicon affect their reading comprehension proficiency. Thus, L2 learners shouldadopt an efficient method to master vocabulary knowledge and teachers shouldemploy flexible word teaching method according to learners’ needs. Therefore, from apedagogical point of view, there is clearly a need for research which contributes toidentify the most critical property of lexicon.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Studies on Lexical Quality
Vocabulary knowledge has been accepted as the crucial instrument in readingcomprehension (Anderson, 2000; Freebody, 1981). In order to measure the correlationbetween vocabulary knowledge and English reading comprehension proficiency, it issignificant to explain the definition of vocabulary knowledge. Vocabulary is anunpredictable term to define in language. Cronbach (1942) classified vocabularyknowledge into two primary categories: the first classification is knowledge of wordmeaning (breadth of meaning, precision of meaning and generalization) and thesecond classification are levels of accessibility to vocabulary knowledge. Obviously,the deficits of this classification are lacking of consideration of the pronunciation,spelling, meaning and the collocation meaning of the vocabulary and so on. In fact,we cannot deliver too many things without grammar, while, While nothing willdelivered without vocabulary. The Lexical Quality which put forward by Perfetti(2007) provides a useful basic outline of vocabulary framework from a newperspective.
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2.2 Theoretical Foundation of Lexical Quality
This section includes four theoretical foundations of Lexical Quality: Richards’conceptual framework of knowledge; Nation’s vocabulary knowledge framework;Henriksen’ continuum theory; Qian’s framework of vocabulary knowledge. Richards’ conceptual framework of knowledge is more comprehensible andsignificant. It was put forward by Richard in 1976. In this frame, he categorized eightassumptions to explain what is included in learning a word. The eight assumptions areas follows:1. Native speakers of a language continue to enlarge their amount of vocabularyin adulthood, while there will be a reduction of development of syntax in adult time.2. Knowing a word indicates capturing the extent of encountering this wordboth in written and spoken language. For many words, we should also master thewords which they are associated with.3. Knowing a word also means knowing its limitation in use.4. Knowing a word entails knowledge of the syntactic behaviors related to. 5. Knowing a word includes knowledge of the morphological property of thisword which is the root.6. Knowing a word concludes the knowledge of semantic representations of thisword.7. Knowing a word entails knowing the associations among the words.8. Knowing a word concludes getting the polysemy of the word.
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Chapter 3 Methodology......30
3.1 Research Questions........31
3.2 Subjects ........31
3.3 Instruments.........32
3.3.1 Lexical Quality Test.........32
3.3.2 Reading Comprehension Test ......34
3.4 Data Collection ........34
3.5 Data Analysis .....35
Chapter 4 Results and Discussion .......36
4.1 Results....36
4.2 Discussion on the Study.......44
Chapter 5 Conclusion .........50
5.1 Major Findings.........50
5.2 Limitations of the Study.......51
5.3 Pedagogical Implications .....52
5.4 Suggestions for Further Researches.......53

Chapter 4 Results and Discussion

4.1 Results
In this Chapter, the author mainly presents the results of the test and discussesthe research questions mentioned in Chapter Three. It mainly deals with the results ofLexical Quality test and reading comprehension test, and shows the correlationbetween English majors’ Lexical Quality (including three aspects: PhoneticProcessing Ability, Orthography Processing Ability, and Semantic Processing Ability)and reading comprehension. The data collected from the two tests were analyzed withthe help of SPSS 19.0. The results of the two tests and the correlation between LexicalQuality and reading comprehension will be analyzed and discussed. The researchquestions will be discussed one by one. The subjects’ Lexical Quality will be presented by the results of the threeaspects, Phonetic Processing Ability, Orthography Processing Ability, and SemanticProcessing Ability. First the three aspects would be successively showed and then theLexical Quality as a whole.In the first place, the first part of the LQ test –Phonetic Processing Ability isintroduced in the following through the descriptive statistics and histogram.

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Conclusion

On account of abundant theoretical accumulation and scientific analysis,conclusions were made out by the author about the overall results of the research, thepedagogical implications in teaching and limitations and suggestions for furtherresearches. The purpose of this study lies in explaining the correlations between Englishmajors’ Lexical Quality and reading comprehension proficiency, particularly thecorrelations between each representational properties (phonology, orthography,semantic) and reading comprehension proficiency. In order to answer theabove-mentioned research questions, 40 juniors of English Majors from BoHaiUniversity participated in this research. They were required to complete a LexicalQuality test and a reading comprehension test respectively. Then SPSS 19.0 is used toanalysis the data from the two tests.On the whole, the links between Lexical Quality and reading comprehensiongenerally supported the research question: 1. Does English majors’ Lexical Qualityhas any correlation with reading comprehension proficiency? 2. If the correlationexists, which representational property of Lexical Quality correlates with readingcomprehension proficiency most? phonology, orthography or meaning? LexicalQuality and comprehension are associated. There is a correlation between Englishmajors’ Lexical Quality and reading comprehension proficiency and presents apositive correlation.
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References (omitted)