Reading comprehension and specialized vocabulary: Does turism vocabulary predict reading comprehension better than general vocabulary?

Abstract

Vocabulary knowledge is one of the most important factors that contribute to reading comprehension (Laufer, 1997; Grabe and Stoller, 2002; Stahl, 2003; Nassaji, 2003; Bernhardt, 2005; Zhang and Anual, 2008). Some researchers suggest that general high frequency words have more effect on reading comprehension (Coady, Magoto, Hubbard, Graney, and Mokhatari, 1993) while some others suggest that low frequency words (e.g. specialized vocabulary) that carry important information in texts could impair the reading process (Freebody and Anderson, 1983; Arnaud and Savignon, 1997). In this article I report the results obtained in research carried out in order to investigate the relationship between distinctively frequent vocabulary in the field of tourism, general English high frequency words and reading comprehension of texts of tourism. The subjects were 135 Mexican students enrolled in the tourism BA at the State University of Nayarit, Mexico. Three data collection instruments were employed: a reading comprehension test, the Vocabulary Levels Test (Schmitt, 2000) and our own tourism vocabulary test. The results show that the distinctively frequent words of tourism predict reading comprehension of tourism texts better than the general English high frequency words. The level that predicts reading comprehension of tourism texts better from the VLT is the 3,000 level.