Knowledge of academic vocabulary and structures and other variables related to EFL reading achievements among Thai undergraduate students:
A correlational study

Snea Thinsan, Language Education, Indiana University

1. Introduction

This report presents and discusses results of the an independent study on Thai EFL undergraduate students’ knowledge of academic vocabulary, knowledge of academic English structures and their relationship with the students’ EFL learning experience and achievement. The study was the third attempt to explore a broader topic of Thai EFL students’ reading problems and the variables involved.

The first exploratory attempt was a qualitative study of three graduate students at a Midwestern public university. The three participants, who had been identified as high-, mid- and low-achievers based on their TOEFL scores of 613, 580, and 513 respectively, completed a set of questionnaires and were interviewed about their reading problems as well as the perceived causes. It was found that the low- and the mid-achievers both viewed their lack of exposure to vocabulary prior to their graduate studies as a major cause of their academic reading, and both admitted that their knowledge about academic structures was the most helpful for their reading. On the other hand, the high-achiever, reflecting less trouble with her reading, stated that she was more confident with her knowledge about vocabulary and grammar.

A continued effort was made to study the same participants from the first study in terms of their struggles with a 437-word academic text in English. The aim was to see how the identified unknown vocabulary and structures affect their comprehension. The think-aloud method was used during their translation task, followed by a semi-structured interview. The analysis of data showed that the low- and mid-achievers understood the text quite poorly, gaining the scores of only 50 and 60% respectively on the multiple-choice comprehension test.  The think-aloud data also revealed limited ability of the low- and the mid-achievers in utilizing the syntactic knowledge to help them make sense of the sentences containing at least one unknown word. As revealed thus far, even graduate students with the TOEFL scores between 500 and 600, which are perceivably higher than the average score of most Thai students in Thailand, still struggle with the lower-level knowledge, namely vocabulary and syntactic knowledge. I was, therefore, strongly motivated to gain a better understanding of the knowledge of academic vocabulary and academic structures of Thai students at undergraduate level in Thailand and of how such knowledge is related to some aspects of their English learning history and, especially, their English learning achievements.

This report describes the third study, summarizes the analyzed data and discusses its findings as follows.

2. Theoretical background

Low English reading proficiency among Thai college students was found by Seelor (1978) and Nilagupta (1982). Both studies concluded that the English reading ability of many college students in Thailand was not effective enough for them to make use of English resources at the college level (i.e. textbooks, journals, magazines, newspapers, etc.). Such findings, unfortunately, seem to be recurring at this level.

In a Thai university classroom of English as a foreign language, it is common to see students looking up vocabulary, read slowly and get confused by sophisticated syntax. Many Thai students complain that they spend many hours on reading a chapter in an English textbook. Furthermore, it is sad to hear that they cannot get the gist of what they read. Then, they feel too discouraged to continue reading and to seek further information from English texts. (Adunyarittigan, 1996: p. 1)

Chun and Plass (1997), as well as Swaffar Arens and Byrnes (1991), regard the reading process as a combination of lower-level processes (i.e. vocabulary and syntactic knowledge and automaticity of text decoding) and higher-level processes (i.e., content schemata, metacognitive knowledge, and use of reading strategies). Interestingly, Laufer and Sim (1985) posit knowledge of vocabulary, subject matter, discourse markers, and syntactic structures in order of decreasing importance.  However, a majority of researchers believe that an interactive approach to reading, which takes into account the contributions of both lower-level processing skills (identification or decoding) and higher-level comprehension and reasoning skills (interpretation and inferencing), are more acceptable. Chun and Plass (1997) maintain that comprehension results from these interactive variables operating simultaneously rather than sequentially.

While it is crucial to note that variables involved with reading problems are complex and interrelated, Adunyarittigan’s claim about Thai students above reflects a serious lack of knowledge and skills at lower-level processes. Higher-level skills and knowledge areas have gained enormous research attention for more than two decades and have been the focus of reading instruction in Thai universities; yet Thai students have been found to possess very limited knowledge about vocabulary and grammar due to their limited exposure to English texts before and after their English classes (Wiroonrat & Thinsan, 1999).  These prominent local voices seem to marry happily with Caroll’s notes that problems of reading comprehension arise mainly when texts contain lexical, grammatical, or ideational materials which happen to be outside the reader’s repertory (Caroll, 1972). Similarly, Yario (1971) includes imperfect knowledge of the target language such as vocabulary and structure as major variables affecting reading problems among L2 readers.

Although one needs to be aware of the effects of prior experience and conceptual development on the reconstruction of meaning (Hall & Ramig, 1978), the need to look more seriously into the knowledge of academic vocabulary and that of academic English structures, and their relationship with language learning achievement and experiences among EFL students in Thai universities seems compelling.

2.1 Academic vocabulary

Many researchers view vocabulary knowledge, in particular, as a critical feature of reading ability. Processing at the word level is theoretically central to successful reading (See Nation, 2001. Coady, 1993; Carr & Levy, 1990; Rayner & Pollatsek, 1989; McKeown & Curtis, 1987). These researchers state that there may be a causal connection between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. Likewise, in L2 reading research, Grabe (1991), comments that "virtually all second language reading researchers agree that vocabulary development is a critical component of reading comprehension" (p. 392).

Nation (2001) further stresses that academic vocabulary is important because: 1) academic vocabulary is common to a wide range of academic texts, and not so common in non-academic texts; 2) it accounts for a substantial number of words in academic texts; 3) it is not generally well-known as technical vocabulary; and (4) it is the kind of specialized vocabulary that an English teacher can usefully help learners with.

Nation (2001) discusses “coverage of token,” which reflects the amount of unknown words in a piece of text. Eighty per cent coverage of a text means that one word in every five is unknown. Ninty percent means one in every ten is unknown, and 95% coverage means one in every twenty is unknown. Hirsh and Nation (1992) suggest that for reading to be easy enough for pleasure, 98-99 % coverage is preferable. To reach 95% coverage of academic text, a vocabulary size of around 4,000 word families would be needed, consisting of 2,000 high-frequency general service words, about 570 general academic words (from the Academic Word List) and 1, 000 or more technical words, proper nouns and low-frequency words. They suggest that no learner reading a fiction text with 80% coverage achieved adequate comprehension. They recommend the probabilistic threshold of around 98% coverage, in which most learners read with comprehension.  They found that only some readers with 95% coverage gain adequate comprehension, but most did not.

Several studies have investigated the vocabulary needed for academic purposes (see Campion and Elley 1971; Praninskas 1972; and Lynn 1973).  Xue and Nation (1984) and Nation (1990) have combined four earlier-compiled word lists into the University Word List, which was later replaced by the Academic Word List (Coxhead, 1998). This latest list comprises 570 word families, based on on a 3, 500, 000 token corpus of academic English, which is divided into four groupings: Arts, Science, Law, and Commerce.

Sutarsyah, Nation, and Kennedy (1994) found that academic vocabulary (the University Word List) accounted for 8.4 % of the tokens in the Learned and Scientific sections of the LOB and Wellington corpora, and 8.7 % of the tokens in economics texts.  Coxhead (1998) found that her academic word list (the Academic Word List) covered 10% of the tokens in her 3, 500, 000 running word academic corpus and about 8.5 % in and independent corpus.

Anderson (1980) found that sub-technical terms were the words most often identified as unknown by her learners in academic texts. Many learners get low scores on the University Word List section of the Vocabulary Levels Tests (appended in Nation, 2001).

The academic VOCABULARY TEST used in this study was taken from the Appendix 3 of Nation (2001). There are 30 questions. The test is now available online at: http://school.discovery.com/quizzes6/grammarworld/Vocab02.html  (EXPAND THIS SECTION)

2.2 Grammar: Academic structures

In the era when communication and meaning are the aim of instruction, Larsen-Freeman  (1997) sensibly argues for a more appropriate treatment of grammar. She suggests that grammar should be taught to help learners who cannot achieve accuracy in English on their own. She also cites Pienemann (1984) as a proof that the learners who receive grammar instruction progress to the next stage after two weeks whereas other learners without tutored development may take several months. Especially related to L2 learners, Hutchinson & Waters (2000) state, “learning involves both the learner’s linguistic knowledge and the conceptual/ cognitive capacities. Second language learners often are “cognitively and conceptually mature, but are linguistically an infant.” (p. 129).   In the same note, Eskey (1983) warns that the need to include linguistic knowledge for L2 learners in designing a course is not to be ignored. These researchers all agree that grammar is still important, and many teachers in Thailand would find it agreeable.

Academic structures that are included in the TOEFL test’s Structure section have been well-researched by the staff at Educational Testing Service (ETS). They are most commonly found in academic texts. They are relatively more complex than the normal sentences many EFL learners with low exposure to materials in English have mastered. Although there are skepticisms and arguments against its use, many universities around that world that admit international students still base their admission on this test.

The TOEFL STRUCTURE TEST does cover only syntactic knowledge, which is knowledge about grammar at sentence level. Many may argue that for a learner to read successfully, they need to utilize linguistic knowledge at discourse level as well. However, Smith (1995) argues that, unless readers comprehend the author’s thoughts on a sentence-by-sentence basis of procedure to which he gives the special name of rauding, then skimming rather than reading is taking place. This, in fact, was confirmed in my second study, when the think-aloud data revealed that the more the lack of understanding of individual sentences the readers faced, the more they were likely to skip the details in other related sentences. This happened more frequently among the lower-achievers.

Informed by the literature of the importance of the knowledge about academic vocabulary and grammar, I asked the following research questions.

(1)   What is the level of knowledge of academic vocabulary and structures of Thai undergraduate EFL students?

(2)   Is the knowledge about academic vocabulary and structures correlated with:

-         the reported number of hours they spend on reading materials in English?

-         the reported high school average English grade?

-         the reported undergraduate average English grade?

3. Methodology

3.1 The participants

The subjects were the 37 students at Chiang Mai University, who had taken at least three fundamental English courses offered at the target university. Sixty of them had been aimed for this pilot study. A colleague of the researcher approached the participants from two summer classes provided for second-year, or higher-year, students from different faculties in social science fields. Sixty of them had agreed to take the tests and answer a set of questionnaire available online. On the appointment dates, a total of only 37 students turned up.

The colleague who helps with the administration of the tools in this study, an assistant professor of English, is an experienced EFL teacher and researcher. She received a PhD from America. She had agreed to participate as a co-researcher in the next study, which will adopt the tools used in this study, probably with some modification. The future study is expected to address the same issues on a national scale, involving representatives of universities across the nation. The author, however, had planned, designed the tools, and completed the study described in this report alone at this stage.

Details about the student participants are as follows: 

Table 1 shows an almost balanced number of male and female students. About 57 per cent of the subjects spend 0-1 hour on reading in English, whereas about 46 per cent spend between 2 to 4 hours. It is interesting to note that most of the participants spend very little time with English, if the reported number is true.

Table 2 tells us that almost half of the subjects are low-achievers in English. It is necessary to note that a very low percentage of students with As participated in this study. In general, the proportion in the grading system at this university is 10-15-50-15-10 (%) for grades A, B, C, D, and F respectively. That is, the grades are usually awarded based on a presumption that the distribution of students enrolled each year is in such a normal curve.

Table 3 demonstrates a rather typical picture of general classrooms in Thai high schools, in which most students receive Cs. It is interesting to note that the subjects’ average grades tend to decrease when they enter the university.

Table 4 reveals that most subjects have taken at least four fundamental English courses, which are compulsory for a majority of social science students. Three of them took as many as 30 courses because they major in English.

3.2 The instruments and administration

A set of questionnaire and tests of vocabulary and structure used in this pilot study can be accessed for references at:

-The questionnaire:
http://school.discovery.com/quizzes6/grammarworld/IUBss.html
-Academic VOCABULARY TEST (adopted from Nation, 2001):

http://school.discovery.com/quizzes6/grammarworld/Vocab02.html

-Academic STRUCTURE TEST (compiled from: Rogers, B. (2001). TOEFL Practice Tests. Stamford: Heinle & Heinle/ITP.):
http://school.discovery.com/quizzes6/grammarworld/AcStructures.html

The subjects were asked to meet the administrator at the target university’s Computer Center and access the initial page (available at http://php.indiana.edu/~sthinsan/CMU.htm), which gives thorough instructions as follow:

3.3 Data analysis

The test results and the questionnaire responses were emailed directly to the researcher after each student had clicked the “submit” buttons. Descriptive statistics and Pearson Correlation were used to analyze the data through SPSS for Windows Version 9.

4. The results and discussions

4.1  Research question:

What is the level of knowledge about academic vocabulary and structures of Thai undergraduate EFL students?

Table 5 indicates that the mean score for the academic VOCABULARY TEST is about 37.75, and the mean score for the test of academic structures is only 29.93.

The subjects were also asked to rate their reading skills, knowledge about vocabulary and grammar on the 1-5 scale, when ‘1’ represents the least satisfaction and ‘5’ the other extreme. Table 6 suggests that they are not very happy with these skills and knowledge areas.

Table 6: Subjects’ satisfaction with their reading skills, knowledge about vocabulary, and grammar

The low achievements in both tests seem to support Wiroonrat and Thinsan’s (1999) finding that poorer students have more problems with both their vocabulary and grammar than the better ones, given that most of the participants in this study gained low grades in the English courses they had taken (refer to Table 2). Wiroonrat, et al. link such lack of knowledge with the limited exposure to English in and outside classroom. When we consider the time the subject in this study spend on reading materials in English in table 2, we might find it easy to agree with Wiroonrat and Thinsan’s remarks. Table 2 shows that as much as 57 per cent of the subjects do not read anything at all in English, or spend only one hour in one week hour doing so, whereas about 46 per cent report spending only between 2 to 4 hours a week.  This scenario is worrying if Thai EFL teachers observe what Anderson, Hiebert, Scott & Wilkinson’s  (1985) findings that students who read a lot tended to read better and the students who read more tended to have larger vocabularies, better comprehension skills, and generally did better on a range of academic subjects.

Nation (2001) strongly suggests that if a learner intends doing academic study in English in upper secondary school or at university, a score of at least 25 out of 30, or about 83.33 %, is desirable.  In this study, it is very obvious that Thai students possess much less amount of academic vocabulary than the acceptable amount recommended by Nation.  Learners with a lower score, according to Nation, should study the list. He advises such learners to learn to use the academic vocabulary both receptively and productively.  He estimates that knowing the 2,000 high-frequency words and the Academic Word List will give close to 90% coverage of the running words in most academic texts.

The very low score of the tests of academic structures thus also confirms the claims and findings in earlier studies conducted in Thailand (for example, Adunyarittigan, 1996; Wiroonrat & Thinsan, 1999; Seelor, 1978; and Nilagupta, 1982).

4.2  Research questions:

      Is the knowledge about academic vocabulary and  structures correlated with:

·        the reported number of hours they spend on reading materials in English?

·        the reported high school average English grade?

·        the reported undergraduate average English grade?

Before answering the above questions, let’s first look at whether the result of the academic test correlates with that of the test of academic structures. Table 7 below shows a reasonably high correlation of .684 of both tests’ results at the significance level of 0.01.  This means that students who know less amount of academic vocabulary also tend to have less knowledge about the academic English structures.

Next, does their knowledge about vocabulary and structures correlate with their hours they spend on reading materials in English?