ACADEMIC WRITING

FINAL ASSIGNMENT
Writing a Comparative summary/synthesis
- Students are to write a comparative summary/synthesis (approximately 1000
words) of 2 articles on the same topic. The topic of the chosen articles should be
related to applied linguistics, TESOL or language teaching. The specific
requirements for this assignment are:
• The summary of the articles’ main contents must be included.
• The focus should be on the similarities and differences between the author’s
ideas in approaching the given matters in their articles.
• Reflective thoughts regarding the Vietnamese contexts in which students are
working as teachers, administrators etc. are expected.
• The original copies of the articles must be attached to the assignment.
• The in-text and end- of –text reference must be written in correct APA style,
i.e, the plagiarism policy will be strictly enforced.

1. The summary of the articles’ main contents

a. The first article: The Effect of Vocabulary Knowledge on Chinese English
Learners’ Reading Comprehension
The article “The Effect of Vocabulary Knowledge on Chinese English Learners’
Reading Comprehension” shed light on the effect of two dimensions of vocabulary
knowledge, namely breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge, on reading
comprehension. The two types of reading comprehension tasks employed to
evaluate the influence of vocabulary knowledge are standard multiple choice
question and summary writing. The article begins with the Introduction and
Literature Review which introduce the problem area, discuss the theories that have
relevance to the research and then point out the gaps in the literature. To make it
clear, many scholars have undertaken numerous research into the correlation
between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. However, more
attention is paid to the influence of vocabulary size on reading comprehension,
vocabulary depth is largely neglected. The article also features two frameworks of
vocabulary knowledge by Nation and Qian and studies on vocabulary knowledge;
nevertheless, these previous studies are inconsistent regarding the importance of
vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension. As a result, there is a need to
analyze the impact of breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge on reading
comprehension in this article. The author of the article then state the three research
questions and three research instruments utilized to get the data in order to generate
the results. The analysis of the results focuses on the correlation between
Vocabulary Knowledge and reading comprehension ability, the effect of
vocabulary knowledge on Multiple Choice reading comprehension and the effect
of vocabulary knowledge on summary writing. The article comes to the conclusion
that vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension are positively correlated
with each other. Furthermore, while breadth of vocabulary knowledge make
contribution to the prediction of multiple- choice reading comprehension, depth of
vocabulary knowledge is a stronger predictor of summary writing.
b. The second article: The effect of vocabulary size and vocabulary depth on
reading in EFL context
The article “The effect of vocabulary size and vocabulary depth on reading in EFL
context” also discovers the effect of vocabulary size and depth on reading
performance in EFL context. In addition to digging up the relationship between the
size of vocabulary and depth of vocabulary, the effect of size of vocabulary and
depth of vocabulary on reading performance, the highlight of the article is to find
out whether it is the size of vocabulary or depth that predicts reading performance
better in an EFL context. The article provides explicit detail on data collection tool,
which are the Voabulary Size Test By Nation and Beglar (2007), The Words
Associate Test by Read (1998) and a reading achievement test. The participants,
data collection procedure and data analysis are also presented to generate the
results. The results confirm the correlation between vocabulary size, depth and
reading performance and vocabulary depth predicted reading performance better.
 2. The similarities and differences between the author’s ideas in
approaching the given matters in their articles.
2.1. The similarities between the author’s ideas in approaching the
given matters in their articles.
The two authors of the two articles approach the same matter, which is the effect of
the breadth (or size) and depth of vocabulary knowledge on reading
comprehension. One significant similarity between the two authors’ ideas in
approaching the matters is that they both analyze the enormous contributions of
breadth and depth of vocabulary to reading comprehensions. The two articles in
turn investigate the effect of breadth of vocabulary and depth of vocabulary and
then draw conclusions about the importance of the two dimensions on reading
comprehension.
In order to come to the conclusion, the two articles both follow the procedures of a
research paper, beginning with the introduction to state the problem area, followed
by the literature review which discusses theories that are relevant to the research,
emphasizes the findings of previous research and points out the gap in the
literature. The research questions, data collection tool and data analysis are also
included. They both use three separate instruments to measure breadth of
vocabulary knowledge, depth of vocabulary knowledge and reading
comprehension. The results sections are clearly presented with a lot of tables to
illustrate the data. The conclusions of the two articles are intensely scrutinized.
2.2. The differences between the author’s ideas in approaching the
given matters in their articles.
There are some profound differences in approaching the matters of the two authors.
The first article examines to find out which dimension (breadth or depth of
vocabulary knowledge) is a stronger predictor of the two types of reading
comprehension tasks, namely standard multiple choice questions and summary
writing. Whereas the second article attempts to reveal whether breadth or depth of
vocabulary knowledge predicted reading performance better. As a result, although
both articles do analyze the effect of vocabulary size and vocabulary depth on
reading performance, the focus of the two articles are quite distinct. The first
article indicates that the breadth of vocabulary knowledge has a greater predictive
power on multiple-choice reading comprehension than the depth of vocabulary
while vocabulary depth was the stronger predictor of summary writing. In contrast,
the second article indicates that although both vocabulary size and vocabulary
depth predicted reading performance of EFL students greatly, vocabulary depth
predicted reading performance better. Consequently, the pedagogical implications
of the two articles are different. Regarding the first article, vocabulary teaching
activities should be more concerned with the depth of vocabulary, rather than
simply introducing the form and superficial meanings of the words. Learners
should also be aware of balancing their acquisition of both breadth and depth of
vocabulary knowledge. Concerning the second article, because the depth of
vocabulary knowledge determines the comprehension level in reading, more
attention should be paid to depth of vocabulary.
Furthermore, the instruments used to measure breadth, depth of vocabulary
knowledge and reading comprehension of the two articles are different. To
measure students’ breadth of vocabulary, the first article uses Schimitt &
Clapham’s vocabulary level test (2001) while the second article uses the
Vocabulary Size Test by Nation and Beglar (2007). The depth of vocabulary
knowledge in the first article is measured by word definition test by Ouellette’s
(2006), multiple- meaning vocabulary by Qian’s (2002) and Tannenbaum et al.’s
(2006) and morphological awareness by Bowers & Kirby (2010); whereas the
second article uses the Words Associate Test by Read (1998) which only tests the
closest meanings to the words and collocations with the words. As far as I am
concerned, the test by the first article is superior in measuring the depth of
vocabulary knowledge. In the first article, the standard multiple – choice reading
comprehension format test is used to measure reading comprehension and
summary writing based on Kirty (2012) is used to measure students’ in-depth text
understanding. A reading achievement test with 45 items and 5 paragraphs, each
including 9 multiple choice questions is used in the second article.
3. Reflective thoughts regarding the Vietnamese contexts in which
students are working as teachers, administrators etc. are expected.
Regarding Vietnamese contexts, vocabulary knowledge also plays an important
role in reading performance. In fact, students’ reading comprehension crucially
depends on their size of vocabulary and depth of vocabulary. In my experience,
students encounter difficulties while reading when their vocabulary items are
limited. In fact, they easily get bored and are not willing to do reading
comprehension exercises because of their lack of vocabulary. Furthermore,
students find it difficult to offer correct answers to questions requiring deep
knowledge of vocabulary. This is because they may know the superficial meaning
of the words but they do not have knowledge of multiple- meaning vocabulary or
morphological or syntactic property of vocabulary. Therefore, teachers in Vietnam
should be aware of the importance of breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge
in reading comprehension to design lessons so that students can broaden their
vocabulary size as well as the depth of vocabulary knowledge to better their
reading performance.

REFERENCES
Kirby, J. R., Cain, K., & White, B. (2012). Deeper learning in reading
comprehension. In J. R. Kirby & M. J. Lawson (Eds.), Enhancing the quality of
learning: Dispositions, instruction, and learning processes (pp. 315-338).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139048224.018
Nation, I. S. P., & Beglar, D. (2007). A vocabulary size test. The language teacher,
31(7), 9-13.
Ouellette, G. P. (2006). What’s meaning got to do with it: The role of vocabulary
in word reading and reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology,
98, 554-566. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.98.3.554
Qian, D. D. (2002). Investigating the relationship between vocabulary knowledge
and academic reading performance: An assessment perspective. Language
Learning, 52, 513-536. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9922.00193
Read, J. (1998). Validating a test to measure depth of vocabulary knowledge.
Validation in language assessment, 41-60.
Schmitt, N., Schmitt, D., & Clapham, C. (2001). Developing and exploring the
behavior of two new versions of the vocabulary levels test. Language Testing, 18,
55-88. https://doi.org/10.1191/026553201668475857
Tannenbaum, K., Torgesen, J. K. & Wagner, R. K. (2006). Relationships between
word knowledge and reading comprehension in third-grade children. Scientific
Studies of Reading, 10, 381-398. https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532799xssr1004_3