Hu and Nation's (2000) study, which stipulated that second language (L2) readers need to be familiar with 98% of lexical items for adequate text comprehension, has become highly influential in L2 vocabulary research and pedagogy. However, the 98% critical threshold figure is based on findings from a research project in which a regression analysis was conducted with only 66 university students in New Zealand. The present study replicated Hu and Nation's research in a context different from a typical Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic context with a sample of 104 Sri Lankan adult L2 learners in a nonacademic context. They each took a Vocabulary Levels Test and read one of five versions of two reading texts at different levels of density of unknown words before answering comprehension questions. The results of the original study could not be fully replicated.

中文翻译：

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未知的词汇密度与阅读理解：复制胡与国家（2000）

Hu 和 Nation (2000) 的研究规定，第二语言 (L2) 读者需要熟悉 98% 的词汇才能充分理解文本，该研究在 L2 词汇研究和教育学中具有很大影响力。然而，98% 的临界阈值是基于一个研究项目的结果，该项目仅对新西兰 66 名大学生进行了回归分析。本研究以非学术背景下的 104 名斯里兰卡成人第二语言学习者为样本，在不同于典型西方、受过教育、工业化、富裕和民主背景的背景下复制了 Hu 和 Nation 的研究。他们每个人都参加了词汇水平测试，并在回答理解问题之前阅读了两篇阅读文本的五个版本之一，其中未知单词的密度不同。原始研究的结果无法完全复制。