THE ROLE OF LEXICAL FREQUENCY IN MODERATING THE EFFECT OF GRAMMAR KNOWLEDGE ON L2 READING OUTCOMES

Main Author: Sahiruddin, Sahiruddin
Format: Article info application/pdf
Bahasa: eng
Terbitan: TEFLIN , 2018
Subjects:
Online Access: http://journal.teflin.org/index.php/journal/article/view/589
http://journal.teflin.org/index.php/journal/article/view/589/300
Daftar Isi:
  • Sentence-level grammar skills are of the important foundations in the mastery of reading skills in second language (L2). Previous studies showed inconclusive findings about the effect of grammar knowledge on L2 reading. This study examines the relationship between L2 reading outcomes and reader-based grammar knowledge as it is moderated by text-based features of vocabulary difficulty. Participants were EFL students (n = 71) in the second year of their English major at an Indonesian university. The participantsâ€TM grammar knowledge was measured using a test of sentence-level grammatical knowledge. Text-based vocabulary difficulty was assessed using VocabProfile software (Cobb, 2010). During the data collection period, the participants completed four reading texts, each reflecting a unique combination of two levels (high vs. low) of lexical frequency. This study reveals that reader grammar knowledge influenced L2 reading outcomes. It also shows that text vocabulary difficulty significantly moderated the relationship between reader grammatical knowledge and L2 reading, indicating that the relationship between grammar knowledge and L2 reading for high lexical frequency texts was significantly greater than for low lexical frequency texts.