The thesis is to talk about different influence by different ways of building vocabulary in reading classes. So there were many questionnaires and class records about the reading classes and data have been collected and analyzed to get more information about the proper way to build vocabulary in reading classes.

1.3 Aim of the thesis

The thesis tries to find the influence that the two ways of building vocabulary when reading passages have for students’ vocabulary learning and reading. 

2. Literature Review

This part is an overview of theories and researches relevant to the present study. It opens with the discussion of the theoretical basis for building vocabulary in reading classes, which includes the importance of vocabulary, the relationship between vocabulary and reading, and the ways to dispose vocabulary in reading classes. Besides, some appraisals of the previous studies are presented.

2.1 The importance of building vocabulary

Christine Nuttall, the English education expert, thinks that no matter it’s in mother language or the second language, the vocabulary can be pided into two types, one is active vocabulary, the other is receptive vocabulary. The active vocabulary is the vocabulary that we are familiar and able to use well, while the receptive vocabulary is the vocabulary that we can recognize but hardly use well. The latter can be transformed into the former. When we are learning a language, we are performing the transition. The more frequently we use the vocabulary, the faster the transition can be.

2.2 The relationship between vocabulary and reading

As English is a foreign language, no matter in the end or middle of learning, reading is by any means as important. The study on it overseas has been for over 100 years which involves the patterns of reading, reading teaching, understanding process, and reading perception. Since almost 10 years ago, domestic related study has developed fast. As the factors that influence reading comprehension, they can be roughly pided as linguistic factors and non-linguistic factors. The former includes vocabulary, sentence structure, and literary piece. The relationship between vocabulary and reading has been widely studied, which mainly focuses on the width, depth of vocabulary and reading, and this was mostly conducted among Chinese students. The width of vocabulary is defined by Li Jun and Zhang Xuebing as the amount of the vocabulary that the learner has got. But the definition of depth of vocabulary is controversial. It was defined as the accuracy, the ability of choosing the best word for the situation and so on. And it was also defined according to the meaning, the collocation of adjectives and nouns, or of verbs and nouns. 

Daneman (1988) advised that vocabulary be the footstone of passages, and reading comprehension depend on, in some way, the understanding of some words, which were also proved by Beck et al (1982), Anderson and Freebody (1981).