Woordkennis Duits In Havo 3: Een Vergelijking Van Twee Methoden

This paper deals with the question whether the method of vocabulary instruction affects the knowledge of German vocabulary of secondary school pupils. We also investigated to what extent vocabulary knowledge affects scores on multiple-choice reading comprehension tests. Subjects were two groups of 'HAV0-3' (i.e. the third year of 'higher general secondary education') pupils. One group used the textbook 'Kennzeichen D' for acquiring FL-vocabulary. The other group used teaching materials which had been constructed by their teacher. In an experiment we used a translation task and multiple-choice reading comprehension tests, which were administered twice with an interval of six months. The method of instruction affected vocabulary knowledge as we measured it. The results of the group which used 'Kenzeichen D' were lower than those of the other group. The influence of vocabulary knowledge on reading comprehension appears to be large, but factors like reading experience and reading proficiency are undoubtedly important too.