Syntactic awareness, working memory & reading comprehension

Authors

1 PhD Candidate in General Linguistics at University of Tehran

2 (PhD), University of Tehran

3 (PhD), Research Institute for Education (Ministry of Education, Iran)

4 (PhD), University of Bojnord

5 (PhD), University of Guilan

Abstract

Reading process includes visual recognition of word, detection and extraction of meaning at phrase and sentence level and detection and extraction of cohesion among text propositions. So, poor readers’ problems are classified at three levels of word’s understanding, syntactic analysis of text sentences, and making consistency among propositions of the text. Syntactic awareness is one of the most important factors that affects detection of meaning at sentence level. Research showed that poor readers are not able to recognize syntactic structures of text and they prefer to read word by word instead of processing the text as meaningful units. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the relationship among syntactic awareness, working memory and reading comprehension. The study was conducted with 157 grade four (9-11 years old) primary students who were selected from male and female schools in three regions of Tehran (5, 6,12). They were selected through multi-stage cluster sampling method. The data collection instruments included reading literacy tests containing literary and informational texts (tests of PIRLS) for assessing reading comprehension, researcher-made syntactic test for assessing syntactic awareness, and Information Processing Index (IPI) for assessing working memory. Regression analyses revealed that syntactic awareness predicts variance of reading comprehension. The result also showed that the relation between syntactic awareness and reading comprehension was mediated by working memory.

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