The role of vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension, inferencing skills, and metacognitive awareness in second language acquisition: an analysis of the English teaching program in two schools at Universidad de Chile

Abstract

As a part of Second Language Acquisition, vocabulary knowledge plays a fundamental role in the development of skills such as reading comprehension and inferencing skills (Nassaji, 2006; Schmitt, 2010a). Likewise, metacognitive awareness ensures learners to compensate for the lack of knowledge in a given subject, including vocabulary knowledge (Read, 2000). Thus, the present study observes the influence of metacognitive awareness, reading comprehension abilities, inferencing skills and vocabulary knowledge in a second language in the program imparted by ‘Plataforma Uchile’. Factors such as the score obtained on Math and Language Standardized tests (PSU) and average grades from high school (NEM) have also been considered. Possible correlations among the aforementioned factors were taken into account. A mixed, non-experimental and cross-sectional study was carried out using descriptive and correlational analysis of data. Further, in order to analyse the perception of the students towards learning a English as a second language qualitative data obtained by a questionnaire was analyzed. 108 students from “Plataforma Uchile” English program were observed. These students belonged to Facultad de Ciencias Sociales (FACSO) and Instituto de Comunicación e Imagen (ICEI). Major findings indicate the existence of significant correlations among certain factors, namely inferencing skills, reading comprehension, metacognitive awareness, vocabulary knowledge and PSU in this particular sample. Nonetheless, no correlations were found regarding the students’ average grades from high school. Considering the qualitative analysis, many students expressed a positive preference towards learning English, although they regarded this activity mainly as a necessary or useful tool for occupational and academic purposes only.