Predicting Korean EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension with Decoding Skills and Oral Vocabulary Knowledge

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The present study investigated the role of decoding skills and oral vocabulary knowledge inpredicting Korean EFL students’ reading comprehension abilities. In doing so, reading volumeand frustration degree were also considered as predicting variables of reading comprehension.The participants of the study were forty-two seventh-grade Korean middle school students, whowere tested on the measures of pseudo- and real-word decoding, oral vocabulary knowledge,reading volume, degree of frustration, and reading comprehension. Data were first analyzedwith correlation analysis, and a series of hierarchical regression analyses were further conductedin order to examine the relative predictive power of decoding skills and oral vocabularyknowledge. The results indicated that all of the variables were statistically significantlycorrelated to each other and both decoding skills and oral vocabulary knowledge explainedunique variance in reading comprehension even after controlling for the effects of readingvolume and frustration. However, when compared, oral vocabulary knowledge turned out to bea more powerful predictor of reading comprehension than decoding skills. Implications ontheory, policy, and classroom instructions are discussed.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• I. INTRODUCTION
• II. LITERATURE REVIEW
• III. METHOD
• IV. RESULTS
• V. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
• REFERENCES