The relationship between syntactic knowledge and reading comprehension in EFL learners

• Authors: Gabriella Morvay
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Via a variety of measurements, 64 Hungarian native speakers in the 12th grade learning English as a foreign language in Slovakia were tested in a cross-sectional correlational study in order to determine the relationship between the ability to process complex syntax and foreign language reading comprehension. The test instruments involved a standardized reading comprehension test in English, and a test of syntactic knowledge in both Hungarian and English, in addition to a background questionnaire in Hungarian. Power correlations and regression analyses rendered results that showed syntactic knowledge to be a statistically significant estimator for foreign language reading comprehension. The study provides evidence that the ability to process complex syntactic structures in a foreign language does contribute to one’s efficient reading comprehension in that language.

Keywords

EN

syntactic knowledge; nonnative reading comprehension

• Publisher: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
• Journal: Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 2
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 415-438

Dates

cover

2012-10

Contributors

author

Gabriella Morvay

• Borough of Manhattan Community College, The City University of New York USA

Identifiers

ISSN

2083-5205

DOI

10.14746/ssllt.2012.2.3.8