Abstract: Although oral vocabulary has been revealed to play crucial roles in reading development, the nature of the relation between oral vocabulary and reading development need to be explored further. The phonological sensitivity approach (PSA) and the comprehensive language approach (CLA) are two major views in this area. PSA claims that oral vocabulary has only indirect effects on reading development via the phonological awareness. In contrast, CLA proposes that oral vocabulary plays important direct roles in reading development, and the role of phonological awareness may be overemphasized in previous research. The debates between the two views are focused on whether oral vocabulary has direct effects on reading development and whether phonological awareness has significant mediating effects. This study aimed to examine the relation between English oral vocabulary and reading development and the mediating effects of phonological awareness among Chinese primary school children in the context of ESL (English as the second language) learning.
Fifty seven children in Grade 4 and sixty three children in Grade 5 participated in this study. They had the same duration of English learning (three years and two months) at the time of assessment. All the children had normal IQ measured by the Chinese version of Raven Progressive Matrices. Tasks in four domains were administered. (1) English oral vocabulary. Expressive vocabulary was measured by a picture naming task and receptive vocabulary was measured by a sound-picture matching task. (2) Chinese oral vocabulary. Similarly, e expressive vocabulary was measured by a picture naming task and receptive vocabulary was measured by the Chinese version of Peabody Picture Vocabulary -Revised (PPVT-R of China; Sang, 1991). (3) Phonological Awareness. Deletion tasks were used to assess children’s awareness of English syllables, onset-rimes and phonemes. (4) English reading. English word naming task, English word comprehension task and English word attack task were used.
The results indicated that both expressive and receptive vocabulary were positively and significantly correlated with all English reading tasks, even controlling for the effects of nonverbal IQ and Chinese oral vocabulary. Hierarchical regression analysis confirmed the unique roles of English oral vocabulary in English reading. In particular, English expressive vocabulary contributed more to English word naming while English receptive vocabulary contributed more to English word comprehension. In addition to the direct effects, English expressive vocabulary also had significantly indirect effects on all reading measures via phonological awareness while English receptive vocabulary had significantly indirect effects on English word comprehension task. Furthermore, compared with the indirect effects via phonological awareness, English expressive vocabulary had stronger direct effects on all the three tasks of English reading, and English receptive vocabulary had stronger direct effects on English word comprehension task.
The results from this study suggests that oral vocabulary is critical for learning to read in a second language, especially for the beginning readers whose major challenge is to decode print into sound. Teachers and parents should pay enough attention to children’s speaking and listening expereince. Furthermore, the data also support the views of comprehensive language approach (CLA) that oral vocabulary plays important direct roles in reading development beyond the influence of phonological awareness.

Key words: Oral vocabulary, reading, phonological awareness, Chinese children, ESL learning