The Correlation between High-frequency Vocabulary Size and College English Test-band-four Scores

摘要

This paper investigates the relationship between the level of high-frequency vocabulary and CET-4 scores of 302 first-year non-English majors of a normal university in China along both the receptive and productive dimensions. The results indicate that (1) students' high-vocabulary size is somewhat restricted and their receptive and productive vocabularies are not balanced, or more precisely, the average receptive vocabulary size is more than twice as great as the average productive vocabulary size; (2) The receptive vocabulary of the students has no significantly positive correlation with their total scores or scores on any part of CET-4, whereas their productive vocabulary has a significantly positive correlation with their total scores and their scores on each part of CET-4; (3) There is a significant difference in high-frequency vocabulary among students of different English language levels. The findings in this paper are a warning for current English vocabulary teaching in China, which focuses on the breadth and reception of vocabulary knowledge while attaching little importance to its depth and production.