Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods (MJLTM)

ISSN: 2251-6204

2014

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SYNTACTIC KNOWLEDGE IN READING

COMPREHENSION TEST PERFORMANCE
Seyede Zahra Hashemi,
Department of Foreign Languages, Shiraz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shiraz, Iran
seyedezahrahashemi@yahoo.com

Amin Borhani
Department of Foreign Languages, Shiraz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shiraz, Iran
amin_borhani@yahoo.com
ABSTRACT
Syntactic knowledge seems to play a function in the meaning construction and interpretation of texts. This
study was conducted to investigate the relative contribution of knowledge of syntax to L2 reading compr ehension. Seventy five students studying at Navid English Institute were randomly selected (33 males and 42
females). Three types of instruments; vocabulary, structure, and reading comprehension tests were used to
gather the data which were analyzed using Pearson correlation and independent t -tests. Results of the statistical analyses revealed that a) the interrelation among grammatical knowledge and RC is high and positive;
b) knowledge of syntax provides a significant contribution to RC; the students whose performance is better
than others on the structure test, outperformed them on reading comprehension test as well; and c) there
arent any significant difference between males and females scores on these two tests. These findings pr ovided empirical support for the importance of syntactic knowledge in reading comprehension and have implications for EFL students, English language instructors, and curriculum experts.
KEY WORDS: reading comprehension, grammatical knowledge, syntax, contribution
1. Introduction
Reading comprehension is much more than the ability to read individual words and know what those words
mean. In order to comprehend the reading material one needs to understand the meaningful message sent
by the author. The entire reading process seems to be affected by the readers knowledge of grammar and
vocabulary. Global text comprehension can be severely impaired if readers generate inaccurate and/or incomplete local text representation (Koda, 2007). As a result, although reading comprehension is mostly conceptual, it still is impacted by the knowledge of grammar either directly or indirectly. However, the role of
grammar in L2 reading has not received much attention by researchers (Alderson, 1984; Nassaji, 2007;
Shiotsu & Weir, 2007; Urquhart & Weir, 1998). This may be due to the nature of reading as a receptive language skill for comprehending the messages of the texts. Hence, knowledge of structure was regarded to
have less to do with comprehending a text than other components such as vocabulary, background
knowledge, and reading strategies. In addition, the 30-year long dominance of Communicative Language
Teaching (CLT) has downgraded the need to address the issue of the role of grammar in L2 reading (Han &
DAngelo, 2009; Urquhart & Weir, 1998).
Individual differences in reading ability may be accounted for by such factors as vocabulary knowledge,
word recognition skills, phonological awareness, and working memory span (Baddeley et al., 1985; Cunningham et al., 1990; Jackson and McClelland, 1979; Palmer et al., 1985). Nevertheless, Urquhart and Weir
(1998: 269), note: Grammar is a component of reading that has been almost ignored in the research. It seems
to us that this is an interesting and potentially valuable research area which L2 teachers and applied li nguists are in a good position to investigate. More recently, in his book on reading assessment, Alderson
(2000: 37) refers to the importance of knowledge of particular syntactic structures, or the ability to process

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them, to some aspects of second language reading and claims that [t]he ability to parse sentences into their
correct syntactic structure appears to be an important element in understanding text.
Sampson (1975: 38) defines syntax as . . . how words are put together to form sentences. For Richards et al.
(1992) grammar is the way in which linguistic units such as words and phrases are combined to produce
sentences in the language (p. 161). Grammatical or syntactic knowledge would seem to be primarily concerned with the well-formedness (or ill-formedness) of a sentence or subparts of a sentence such as a clause
or a phrase. In this paper, following Urquhart and Weir (1998) grammar is used in the traditional sense, to
refer either to syntax, or to syntactic knowledge.
2. Background
Second language (L2) reading is defined as receiving and interpreting information encoded in L2 via the
medium of print (Urquhart & Weir, 1998). L2 reading is supposed to be more complex than L1 reading since
L2 readers start to read in the second language before achieving the kind of grammatical maturity and the
level of oral vocabulary that L1 readers attain before they begin to read (Shiotsu, 2009, p. 16). Even though
grammatical competence is believed to be crucial for identifying syntactic relations of sentence components,
there has been little research on how readers knowledge of grammar contributes to L2 reading comprehension (Alderson, 1984; Shiotsu & Weir, 2007; Urquhart & Weir, 1998). Most studies addressing the role of
grammar in L2 reading explored the issue by measuring the correlation between learners grammatical
knowledge and their L2 reading comprehension ability (Urquhart & Weir, 1998). For example, Alderson
(1993) reviewed the data from the English Language Testing Services (ELTS) Revision Project and found a
considerable overlap between scores on the grammar test and the reading test, which led him to propose a
significant role of grammar in L2 reading. Similarly, in Kuhn and Stahls (2003) review of theories and research on reading instruction, training L2 readers to parse sentences into meaningful phrases and providin g
them with already syntactically segmented texts were proved to promote L2 reading comprehension to a
significant level. That is to say, the abilities to dissect sentences into meaningful chunks, identify syntactic
roles of words, and recognize the syntactic structure of a sentence seem beneficial in the construction of
meaning from the text. Further evidence of the role of grammar in L2 reading comes from studies that compared the relative importance of grammar with that of other L2 reading components, such as background
knowledge and vocabulary (Barnett, 1986; Barry & Lazarte, 1995, 1998; Shiotsu & Weir, 2007). In Barnetts
(1986) study that explored the relative contribution made by grammar and vocabulary to L2 reading, grammatical knowledge was shown to have a comparable effect on L2 comprehension to that of vocabulary
knowledge. On that account, Barnett asserts that too much emphasis on vocabulary growth or inferencing
skills at the expense of ignoring the importance of grammar may not suffice to promot e the development of
L2 reading ability. In a more recent study conducted by Shiotsu and Weir (2007), where the scope of grammar was clearly explained as including the knowledge of inflectional morphology, verb forms, and tran sformations, grammatical knowledge emerged as a stronger predictor of L2 reading ability.
On the other hand Ulijn stated that poor L2 reading is not due to the deficiency in L2 grammar, but inadequate knowledge of vocabulary that bears semantic information ( Ulijn, 1981; Ulijn & Kempen, 1976). This
speculation is supported by findings from Brisboiss (1995) and Haynes and Carrs (1990) studies, where v ocabulary knowledge was shown to be a better predictor of L2 reading ability than grammar.
However there is also research showing that grammar has a comparable or a stronger effect on L2 reading
(Alderson, 1993; Barnett, 1986; Shiotsu & Weir, 2007; van Gelderen, et al., 2004). For example, Barnett studied
the relative importance of vocabulary and grammar in L2 reading using cloze items, ha lf depending on vocabulary and the other half depending on grammar. The results of ANOVA showed that vocabulary and
grammar had almost symmetrical effects on L2 reading comprehension, which led Barnett to assert the need
for a balanced emphasis on vocabulary and grammar in L2 reading instruction. Also, in more recent studies
done by van Gelderen et al. (2004, 2007) and Shiotsu and Weir (2007), each of the latent grammar and voca bulary variables accounted for a significant amount of variance in the latent L2 reading comprehension variable. Based on the results, it is claimed that the role of vocabulary appears somewhat overstated while that
of grammar understated (Shiotsu & Weir, 2007, p. 104).
Early studies on syntactic development in reading impaired children suggest that reading disabled children
have deficiencies in their application as well as understanding of syntax. Cromer and Wiener (1966) pr oposed that unskilled readers do not use syntax to assist and help in decoding written material. Vogel (1975)
demonstrated that reading impaired children had deficits in areas measuring the syntax of expressive language and found a significant correlation between productive syntax scores and reading comprehension

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scores, while Anderson (1982) revealed that poor readers exhibit syntactic deficiencies in the written language. There exists two approaches with regard to impaired readers and the origin of their inferior performance. Researchers who associate poor readers difficulties with underlying phonological processing deficits
(Macaruso, Bar-Shalom, Crain and Shankweiler, 1989; Liberman and Shankweiler, 1985; Shankweiler and
Crain, 1986; Shankweiler et al., 1995; Smith, Macaruso, Shankweiler and Crain, 1989) support the Processing
Deficit Hypothesis (PDH). According to PDH unskilled readers do not experience deficits in representing or
processing syntactic information but do experience difficulty in processing and retaining phonological i nformation in working memory. This deficiency keeps information from being delivered at the necessary pace
and with the required precision for higher level processing. Shankweiler and Crain (1986) propose that diff iculty in the processing of complex syntactic structures should be interpreted as difficulty at the phonological
rather than the syntactic level. On the other hand the Structural Deficit Hypothesis (SDH) attributes difficulties in the acquisition of reading to syntactic processing deficiencies (Bentin, Deutsch and Liberman, 1990;
Bowey, 1986a, 1986b; Menyuk et al., 1991; Scarborough, 1991; Stein, Cairns and Zurif, 1984). The SDH states
that an absence of grammatical knowledge or lack of processing ability interferes with higher level text comprehension.
Ulijn (1981; 1984) claims on the basis of his research that L2 reading requires little syntactic processing but
much lexical-conceptual processing. On the other hand, in his work on the English Language Testing Service
(ELTS) Revision Project, Alderson (1993) found high correlations between a grammar test and tests of academic reading. During the development of the IELTS test, he found that there were very high correlations
between the grammar test and different tests of reading. In fact, Alderson found that grammar correlated
more strongly with different reading measures than these different reading measures did among themselves.
However, studies in this area are problematic. Alderson (1993) observed that the results, then, appear to
show that a (vaguely defined) generalized grammatical ability is an important component in reading in a
foreign language (p. 218). But, as he himself admits, he was unable to avoid a degree of contamination of
the grammar variable, since his grammar measure involved the processing of sentence semantics, e.g. the
referential and sense meanings of lexical items. Similarly, qualitative research by Bernhardt (1991; 2000) suggests that syntax plays a significant role in L2 reading ability.
There are few other published studies involving separate measures of syntax, vocabulary, and reading skills
in L2. Barnetts (1986) data led her to conclude that both syntactic and vocabulary knowledge affect reading
comprehension, as increases in the levels of syntactic and vocabulary knowledge of her students seemed a lmost symmetrical in their effects on reading recall performance. Haynes and Carr (1990) found their students reading comprehension performance correlating better with vocabulary than grammar but the st udents reading speed showed the reverse pattern. In his study of the reading performance of L2 learners of
Dutch, Bosserss data (1992) indicated that vocabulary and grammar were both significant predictors, with
vocabulary achieving a slightly stronger prediction.
3. Method
3.1. Subjects
The participants in this study were 104 high intermediate level students - male and female- studying English
at Navid English Institute in Shiraz, Iran. These randomly selected students were between 16 to 22 years of
age and from one language background, Persian. A Word Level Test was given to them and 75 of the students (33 males and 42 females) whose grades proved to be significantly indifferent and as a result were
supposed to be at the same level of vocabulary knowledge were selected to take structure and Reading
Comprehension Tests.
3.2. Instruments
Urquhart and Weir (1998), and Alderson (1993) point out that in testing grammar/syntax our instruments
should reflect as closely as possible that construct alone. We must minimize the overlap in the behaviors
sampled in what is meant to be a test of syntax with those in the test of reading comprehension. Most
measures of L2 syntactic knowledge involve the processing of visually presented text, judged as a kind of
reading. Also, the more meaning extraction is integrated in the task and the more contextualized the task
becomes, the more it seems to include the characteristics of reading. Therefore, a test of syntactic knowledge
should attempt to decrease the need for semantic processing and keep contextualization to a minimum in
order to achieve independence from a test of RC.

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Three instruments were used to measure participants knowledge of vocabulary and sentence structure and
their reading comprehension ability. Each will be described below.
1) Vocabulary test:
In their investigation to the role of depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension of
Iranian EFL learners, Rashidi & Khosravi (2010) used a test originally called the Vocabulary Levels Test (Nation, 1983, cited in Qian 2002).This English vocabulary size test (VS) has been used to measure the learner's
size of vocabulary knowledge. It is composed of five different levels, namely, the 2000 word-family level, the
3000 word family level, the 5000 word-family level, the university word list level, and the 10000 word-family
list. Rashidi & Khosravi (2010) used a revised version of Nation's Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) by Schmitt et
al (2001) that has 150 items. They stated that VLT has a reliability of above .90 and used an equivalent version of the test developed by Norbert Schmitt to confirm the validity of VLT. The reported Pearson Product
Moment correlation between the two tests was above .95. The test has been accepted by a number of L2 r esearchers as an appropriate and valid measure of vocabulary size (e.g., Laufer and Paribakht, 1998; Qian,
1999). The same test was used in this study to investigate the students vocabulary knowledge.
2) Structure test:
This test is a standardized test taken from the TOEFL consisting of 40 multiple-choice questions. It consisted
of two parts. The first part was a fifteen 4-choice, fill in the blank items, and the second part was a twenty
five 4-choice, underlined items (Considering one point for each item, the total score for this section was forty
points).
3) Reading comprehension (RC) test:
This is a standardized reading comprehension test taken from the TOEFL consisting of five passages with 50
multiple-choice questions.
3.3. Procedures
After gathering the required data, statistical analyses were performed using SPSS 18. The data of the study
were subjected to descriptive and inferential statistics upon which the results and conclusions were made. In
descriptive statistics mean and standard deviation were utilized to summarize the data and in the inferential
statistics a Pearson Correlation was run to see if there is any significant relationship between Structure and
RC scores. Also two separate Independent Sample T-tests were carried out to check the significance of differences between male and female scores. In order to eliminate pressure, the students were notified that the
test scores would not have any effects on their regular class performance and the purpose of the study was
clearly explained to them.
4. Data Analysis and Results
The mean and standard deviation of the scores is presented in Table 1.
Table 1: Descriptive Statistics of the Students' Scores on structure and reading comprehension
Mean
Std. Deviation
N
structure
28.55
3.804
75
reading comprehension
29.00
4.970
75

As Table 1 clarifies, the average amount of variation from the mean score (SD) for each variable is not so
great, and the individual scores are distributed not far from the mean.
In order to examine the existence and the degree of correlation between students' scores on Sentence Structure and RC (Reading Comprehension), Pearson Correlation was used. Table 2 shows the correlation results.
Table 2: Correlation between students score on sentence structure and RC
structure
comprehension
structure
Pearson Correlation
1
.629 **
Sig. (2-tailed)
.000
N
75
75
comprehension
Pearson Correlation
.629 **
1
Sig. (2-tailed)
.000

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N
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

75

2014

75

This table reveals that there is a significant linear positive relationship between students Sentence Structure
knowledge and their RC performance; the Pearson correlation is .629, and it is significant at the 0.01 level.
One interpretation may be that syntactic knowledge is one of the deciding factors in the performance on text
reading comprehension.
Descriptive statistics showed different means obtained from structure and RC test scores of the two groups
(males and females). The results can be seen in the following tables.
Table 3: Descriptive Statistics (Structure Test)
gender
male
female

N
33
42

Mean
29.18
28.05

Table 4: Descriptive Statistics (RC Test)

gender
N
Mean
male
33
28.82
female
42
29.14

Std. Deviation
3.566
3.951

Std. Deviation
4.733
5.201

Since there were two independent groups of participants, to prove the significance of these differences I ndependent T-tests were run between male and female students' scores on Sentence Structure and RC. The r esults of the t-tests are represented in Tables 5 and 6.
Table 5: Independent Samples T-test between Students' Scores on Structure
Levene's Test for Equality of
t-test for Equality of Means
Variances
F

structure

Equal variances
assumed
Equal variances
not
assumed

1.282

Sig.

df

Sig. (2-tailed)

1.288

73

.202

1.304

71.547

.197

.261

Levene's Test for Equality of Variances indicates that Sig=.261>.05 which proves the equality of variances at
.05 level of significance. T-test for Equality of Means demonstrate that Sig=.202>.05. So the difference between the means obtained from structure test scores of the two groups is proved to be insignif icant; the two
groups performed equally well on the structure test.
Table 6: Independent Samples T-test between Students' Scores on RC
Levene's Test for Equality of
t-test for Equality of Means
Variances

structure

Equal variances
assumed

Sig.

df

Sig. (2-tailed)

0.433

0.508

-0.279

73

0.78

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Equal variances
not
assumed

-0.282

71.27

2014

0.77

Levene's Test for Equality of Variances indicates that Sig=.508>.05 which proves the equality of variances at
.05 level of significance. T-test for Equality of Means demonstrate that Sig=.78>.05. So the difference between
the means obtained from RC test scores of the two groups is proved to be insignificant; the two groups performed equally well on the RC test.
6. Discussion
Concerning the role of syntactic knowledge in RC, support to the findings of this study comes from Alderson (1993), Kuhn and Stahl (2003), Shiotsu and Weir (2007), and van Gelderen et al. (2004, 2007), who believed in the significant role of grammar in L2 reading. Alderson (1993 ) found high correlations between a
grammar test and tests of academic reading. During the development of the IELTS test, he found that there
were very high correlations between the grammar test and different tests of reading. The results of the pr esent study also lend support to the Structural Deficit Hypothesis (SDH) which attributes difficulties in the
acquisition of reading to syntactic processing deficiencies (Bentin, Deutsch and Liberman, 1990; Bowey,
1986a, 1986b; Menyuk et al., 1991; Scarborough, 1991; Stein, Cairns and Zurif, 1984) .Findings are also in
agreement with those of Bernhardt (1991; 2000), who carried out qualitative research suggesting that syntax
plays a significant role in L2 reading ability.
7. Conclusions
The broad goal of this study was to discern the role that syntactic knowledge plays in the reading comprehension performance of Iranian students of English as a foreign language. The results we presented point to
a strong relationship between syntactic skills and reading comprehension abilities in both the female and
male participants of the study; a significant positive linear correlation was proved to exist. Therefore, it is
concluded that the students who perform better in sentence structure tests have better grades on the RC t ests
and the students whose performance is not as good as others have pitfalls in their RC as well. These findings
strongly suggest that without the suitable knowledge of structure the probability of a perfect reading comprehension is low. Moreover, as there was no significant difference between the two groups males and females did equally well on the structure test and reading comprehension test- it is concluded that gender has
no role in Iranian EFL learners performance on these tests.
8. Implications and limitations of the study
This study provides evidence about the significant role of grammar in L2 reading The results of the present
study inform language instructors, EFL learners, and curriculum designers of the significance of the
knowledge of syntax in reading comprehension. Conducting studies like the present one is useful for L2 curriculum developers because the findings of the study can help them make more proficient decisions on the
language skills to be emphasized in language programs. This study only focused on investigating students
reading comprehension on the TOEFL test; as a result, more studies with different types of tests and tasks
should be conducted in the future to examine major barriers to comprehending reading texts.
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