Effect of Vocabulary and Grammar Proficiency on Reading

This study investigates the effect of vocabulary and grammar proficiency on readingcomprehension of Iranian junior high school students. For this purpose, 110 elementaryfemale students studying English in the second year in junior high schools in Yazd, Iran wererandomly selected to participate in this study. Their age ranged from thirteen to fourteen.They participated in a test of overall language proficiency; fifty four homogeneous studentswere then randomly selected and divided into two equal-in-number groups. Two groupstook reading comprehension pretest to measure a starting point or the amount of preexistingknowledge on the course topic. Then, the two groups were exposed to differenttreatments. Vocabulary Group received vocabulary instruction and they learned words,whereas Grammar Group received instruction based on grammar and English rules andforms were taught to them. At the end of the treatments, the subjects in each one of theexperimental groups took reading comprehension posttest. After analyzing the data via aseries of T-tests, the results showed that there was a significant difference between twogroups and within each group and revealed not only both vocabulary and grammarproficiency had positive effects on reading comprehension but also grammar proficiencywas more effective than vocabulary proficiency. In other words the participants who weremore proficient in grammar than vocabulary performed better in reading comprehension.

Keywords:

Instruction , Linguistic Knowledge , Treatment