Keywords
nonnative reading comprehension
How to Cite
Number of views: 843
Number of downloads: 509
Abstract
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.References
Baddeley, A., Logie, R., & Nimmo-Smith, I. (1985). Components of fluent reading. Journal of Memory and Language, 24, 119-131.
Barnett, M. (1986). Syntactic and lexical/semantic skill in foreign language reading: Importance and Interaction. Modern Language Journal, 70, 343-349.
Bentin, S., Deutsch, A., & Liberman, I. Y. (1990). Syntactic competence and reading ability in children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 48, 147-172.
Berman, R. A. (1984). Syntactic components of the foreign language reading process. In J. Alderson & A. Urquhart (Eds.), Reading in a foreign language (pp. 139-156). New York: Longman.
Bernhardt, E. (2003, December). Examining the role of syntactic proficiency in second-language reading comprehension. Paper presented at the National Reading Conference, Scottsdale, AZ.
Brisbois, J. E. (1995). Connections between first- and second-language reading. Journal of Reading Behavior, 27, 565-584.
Chall, J. S. (1983). Stages of reading development. New York: McGraw Hill.
Chomsky, C. (1969). The acquisition of syntax in children from 5 to 10. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Clarke, M. (1979). Reading in English and Spanish: Evidence from adults ESL students. Language Learning, 29, 121-150.
Cox, (1976, May). A study of the syntactic competence of adult beginning readers. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International reading Association, Anaheim, CA.
Crain, S., & Shankweiler, D. (1988). Syntactic complexity and reading comprehension. In A. Davison & G. M. Green (Eds.), Linguistic complexity and text comprehension: Readability issues reconsidered (pp. 167-92). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Cziko, G. A. (1978). Differences in first- and second language reading: The use of syntactic, semantic and discourse constraints. Canadian Modern Language Review, 34, 473-489.
Daneman, M. (1988). Word knowledge and reading skill. In M. Daneman, G. E. MacKinnon, & T. G. Waller (Eds.), Reading research: Advances in theory and practice: Vol. 6 (pp. 145-175). New York: Academic Press.
Danks, J. H. & End, L. J. (1987). Processing strategies for listening and reading. In R. Horowitz & S. J. Samuels (Eds.), Comprehending oral and written language. New York: Academic Press.
Demont, E., & Gombert, J. E. (1996). Phonological awareness as a predictor of reading skills and syntactic awareness as predictor of comprehension skills. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 66, 315-332.
Duker, S. (1965). Listening and reading. The Elementary School Journal, 65(6), 321-29.
Dymock, S. (1993). Reading but not understanding. Journal of Reading, 37(2), 86-91.
Ehri, L. C. (1991). Learning to read and spell words. In L. Rieben & C. A. Perfetti (Eds.), Learning to read: Basic research and its implications (pp. 57-73). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Ehri, L., & Wilce, L. (1980). Do beginners learn to read function words better in sentences or in lists? Reading Research Quarterly, 15(4), 451-476.
Forrest-Pressley, D., & Waller, T. G. (1981). Cognition, metacognition, and reading. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Hirsch-Pasek, K., Gleitman, L. R., & Gleitman, H. (1978). What did the brain say to the mind? A study of the detection and report of ambiguity by young children. In A. Sinclair, R. J. Jarvella, & W. J. M. Levelt (Eds.), The child’s conception of language. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Klein, E., & Martohardjono, G. (1999). Investigating second language grammars. In E. C. Klein & G. Martohardjono (Eds.), The development of second language grammars: A generative approach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Koda, K. (1993). Transferred L1 strategies and L2 syntactic structure in L2 sentence comprehension. The Modern Language Journal, 77, 490-500.
Liberman, I. Y., & Shankweiler, D. (1985). Phonology and the problems of learning to read and write. Remedial and Special Education, 6(6), 8-17.
MacGinitie, W. H., MacGinitie, R. K., Maria, K., Dreyer, L. G., & Hughes, K. G. (2000). Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests. Level 6 (4th ed.). Riverside: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Martohardjono, G., Otheguy, R., Gabriele, A., & Troseth, E. (2005). The role of syntax in reading comprehension: A study of bilingual readers. In: J. Cohen, K. McAlister, K. Rolstad, & J. MacSwan (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla.
McKeown, M. G., Beck, I. L., Omanson, R. C., & Perfetti, C. (1983). The effects of long-term vocabulary instruction on reading comprehension: A replication. Journal of Reading Behavior, 15(1), 3-18.
Morais, J., Cary, L., Alegria, J., & Bertelson, P. (1979). Does awareness of speech as a sequence of phones arise spontaneously? Cognition, 7, 323-331.
Nation, K., & Snowling, M. (2000). Factors influencing syntactic awareness skills in normal readers and poor comprehenders. Applied Psycholinguistics, 21, 229-241.
Odlin, T. (2003). Cross-linguistic influence. In C. J. Doughty & M. H. Long (Eds.), The handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 436-486). Oxford: Blackwell.
Rego L. L., & Bryant, P.E. (1993). The connection between phonological, syntactic and semantic skills and children’s reading and spelling. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 8(3), 235-46.
Ryan, E. B., & Ledger, G. W. (1984). Learning to attend to sentence structure: Links between metalinguistic development and reading. In J. Downing & R. Valtin (Eds.), Language awareness and learning to read (pp. 149-171). New York: Springer-Verlag.
Shiotsu, T., & Weir, C. J. (2007). The relative significance of syntactic knowledge and vocabulary breadth in the prediction of reading comprehension test performance. Language Testing, 24(1), 99-128.
Sinatra, G. M., & Royer, J. M. (1993). The development of cognitive component processing skills that support skilled reading. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85, 509-519.
Thorndike, E., & Lorge, I. (1944). The teacher’s word book of 30,000 words. New York: Teachers College Press.
Waltzman, D. E., & Cairns, H. S. (2000). Grammatical knowledge of third grade good and poor readers. Applied Psycholinguistics, 21(2), 263-284.
Willows, D. M., & Ryan E. B. (1986). The development of grammatical sensitivity and its relationship to early reading achievement. Reading Research Quarterly, 21(3), 253-66.
License
1.1 The Author hereby warrants that he/she is the owner of all the copyright and other intellectual property rights in the Work and that, within the scope of the present Agreement, the paper does not infringe the legal rights of another person. The owner of the copyright work also warrants that he/she is the sole and original creator thereof and that is not bound by any legal constraints in regard to the use or sale of the work.
1.2. The Publisher warrants that is the owner of the PRESSto platform for open access journals, hereinafter referred to as the PRESSto Platform.
2. The Author grants the Publisher non-exclusive and free of charge license to unlimited use worldwide over an unspecified period of time in the following areas of exploitation:
2.1. production of multiple copies of the Work produced according to the specific application of a given technology, including printing, reproduction of graphics through mechanical or electrical means (reprography) and digital technology;
2.2. marketing authorisation, loan or lease of the original or copies thereof;
2.3. public performance, public performance in the broadcast, video screening, media enhancements as well as broadcasting and rebroadcasting, made available to the public in such a way that members of the public may access the Work from a place and at a time individually chosen by them;
2.4. inclusion of the Work into a collective work (i.e. with a number of contributions);
2.5. inclusion of the Work in the electronic version to be offered on an electronic platform, or any other conceivable introduction of the Work in its electronic version to the Internet;
2.6. dissemination of electronic versions of the Work in its electronic version online, in a collective work or independently;
2.7. making the Work in the electronic version available to the public in such a way that members of the public may access the Work from a place and at a time individually chosen by them, in particular by making it accessible via the Internet, Intranet, Extranet;
2.8. making the Work available according to appropriate license pattern Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) as well as another language version of this license or any later version published by Creative Commons.
3. The Author grants the Publisher permission to reproduce a single copy (print or download) and royalty-free use and disposal of rights to compilations of the Work and these compilations.
4. The Author grants the Publisher permission to send metadata files related to the Work, including to commercial and non-commercial journal-indexing databases.
5. The Author represents that, on the basis of the license granted in the present Agreement, the Publisher is entitled and obliged to:
5.1. allow third parties to obtain further licenses (sublicenses) to the Work and to other materials, including derivatives thereof or compilations made, based on or including the Work, whereas the provisions of such sub-licenses will be the same as with the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons sub-license or another language version of this license, or any later version of this license published by Creative Commons;
5.2. make the Work available to the public in such a way that members of the public may access the Work from a place and at a time individually chosen by them, without any technological constraints;
5.3. appropriately inform members of the public to whom the Work is to be made available about sublicenses in such a way as to ensure that all parties are properly informed (appropriate informing messages).
6. Because of the royalty-free provision of services of the Author (resulting from the scope of obligations stipulated in the present Agreement), the Author shall not be entitled to any author’s fee due and payable on the part of the Publisher (no fee or royalty is payable by the Publisher to the Author).
7.1. In the case of third party claims or actions for indemnity against the Publisher owing to any infractions related to any form of infringement of intellectual property rights protection, including copyright infringements, the Author is obliged to take all possible measures necessary to protect against these claims and, when as a result of legal action, the Publisher, or any third party licensed by the Publisher to use the Work, will have to abandon using the Work in its entirety or in part or, following a court ruling in a legal challenge, to pay damages to a third party, whatever the legal basis
7.2. The Author will immediately inform the Publisher about any damage claims related to intellectual property infringements, including the author’s proprietary rights pertaining to a copyrighted work, filed against the Author. of liability, the Author is obliged to redress the damage resulting from claims made by third party, including costs and expenditures incurred in the process.
7.3. To all matters not settled herein provisions of the Polish Civil Code and the Polish Copyright and Related Rights Act shall apply.