Many recent studies have been conducted to investigate on learning vocabularythrough reading. When examining this issue, many questions have been raised. Attentionhas been paid to not only the amount of vocabulary or the frequency is learnt but alsodifferent aspects such the number of words taught or test formats and so on. In thisresearch, we have reviewed the findings of some previous studies related to this topic. Theresults show that most of these studies support the belief that vocabulary can be learnt fromreading text but not much. They also suggest that it would be more effective to learnvocabulary if useful reading is combined with authentic reading materials regularly.Besides analyzing relevant opinions for these studies, the article also provides illustrativeexamples to take some suggestions into consideration in applying reading references toimprove the amount of vocabulary for non-English major students.