The present study aims to investigate the direct and indirect contributions of Korean EFL college students’ L2 receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge to their L2 writing performances by using a structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis with a goal to explore the pathways of vocabulary knowledge to writing. Data from 178 students were collected through tests of receptive and productive vocabulary breadth and depth, a writing test and a reading test. In testing a hypothesized model on the roles of receptive and productive vocabulary in writing, the results of the SEM analysis reveal the direct role of productive vocabulary in writing. The indirect role of receptive vocabulary on writing was observed through the mediating role of productive vocabulary or reading ability due to the direct contribution of receptive vocabulary to both productive vocabulary and reading and that of productive vocabulary and reading to writing. Findings from the study shed light on the relations of L2 receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge with L2 writing abilities, suggesting potential benefits of both receptive and productive vocabulary learning for L2 writing.

The present study investigated which facets of perceived self-efficacy (PSE) in L2 reading are significantly related to L2 reading proficiency (L2RP), which type of linguistic knowledge feeds into PSE, and how they are related to L2RP when considered together. Participants (n = 95) were college students from two universities in Seoul. Four subcomponents of PSE were identified for investigation: text-based PSE, general PSE, PSE in linguistic knowledge, and PSE in authentic reading. The result of stepwise multiple regression analysis showed that the general PSE whose items reflect dimensions of social comparative influences and perceived controllability over environments was the only significant predictor of L2RP (R2 = 17.7%). For the relationships between linguistic knowledge and PSE, vocabulary knowledge (VK) was shown to be the only significant predictor of PSE when considered together with grammar knowledge (GK) and L2RP (R2 = 22.9%), while VK and GK were significant predictors of L2RP (R2 = 69.4%). PSE was not found to make an independent contribution to L2RP when considered with linguistic knowledge.

This study attempted to investigate the relative contribution of vocabulary and grammatical knowledge to second language reading comprehension ability. With 44 EFL adult learners whose language proficiency fell within the low-intermediate level, three different measures were conducted: vocabulary and grammatical knowledge were measured by researcher-developed tests and L2 reading comprehension was measured using the reading section of the TOEIC test. In order to examine the two predicting variables (i.e., vocabulary and grammatical knowledge) a multiple regression analysis was performed. The study found that both grammatical and vocabulary knowledge related significantly to L2 reading comprehension. Additionally, vocabulary knowledge showed a slightly stronger contribution to reading comprehension than syntactic knowledge. These findings suggest that it is equally important for lower level readers to understand vocabulary as well as basic syntactic rules and structures when it comes to EFL reading comprehension.