Enhancement of vocabulary through extensive reading

Abstract

The relationship between extensive reading and vocabulary knowledge has been investigated by many researchers in the last few decades. These studies were based on the belief that students may acquire a good number of new words while involved in reading a large amount of reading materials; therefore , the current study is conducted to investigate the effect of extensive reading on vocabulary enhancement. The study took place at the Larbi Ben MHidi university, department of english, Oum-El-Bouaghi where fifty three (53) english majors, divided into two groups, a control and an experimental group. The latter underwent in an experiment of reading a number of short stories. Two vocabulary tests and two questionnaires have been designed to investigate the effect of extensive reading on students' enhancement of vocabulary. While the vocabulary enhancement has been measured by the pre-test and post-test, the students' attitudes towards reading, the exploration of their interests as well as the strategies used while reading have been all gone through in the pre-questionnaire and pos-questionnaire. The findings show not only the positive effect of extensive reading on vocabulary knowledge and acquisition but also the students' positive attitudes towards reading in general and extensive reading in particular. These findings have led to some implications where the reading skill ought to be taught as a module and instructors are urged to assign extensive reading to their students.