vocabulary priorities in nursing english reading texts

The present study tries to account for the contribution of the depth, breadth and semi-technical vocabulary knowledge to eap reading comprehension of iranian nursing students. the researcher further pursues the possible impact of the vocabulary facets on iranian eap learners reading comprehension. to this end, the researchers asked 158 nursing undergraduates to participate in the study. schmitt, schmitt and clapham s (2001) vocabulary level test, read s (1993) word associate test, the researchers’-made semi-technical vocabulary knowledge test and eap reading comprehension texts by kayhani, barekat, akbari, and torabi godarzi (2013) were utilized to collect the required data. besides the intercorrelation among the facets of vocabulary knowledge and iranian eap learners reading comprehension, the depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge were the significant predictors of the reading comprehension construct. in an ex-post facto design, the researcher also came to this point that the differences in the knowledge of vocabulary depth affected the iranian students’ eap reading comprehension. furthermore, it was confirmed that learners reading comprehension was not tied to the semi-technical vocabulary knowledge.