Assessing the Relative Roles of Vocabulary and Syntactic Knowledge in Reading Comprehension

The purpose of the study was to explore the relative contribution of both vocabulary knowledge and grammatical knowledge as predictors of reading comprehension performance. To accomplish this, a total of 337 college students voluntarily participated in the study, all of whom were then taking an English reading course at two different universities. The measurement instruments used for the study were based on three sections: vocabulary, grammar, and reading comprehension. Each section consisted of two different tasks. For all the tasks except the recall task, the scoring procedure proved easy and expedient, with 1 point being assigned for correct items, and 0 point for incorrect ones. To obtain valid measures for the recall task, the learners were scored using Johnson’s (1970) unweighted pausal unit analysis. For the data analysis, structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted to evaluate the role of syntactic knowledge and vocabulary knowledge where it predicts the L2 reading ability of the learners. The SEM analysis indicated that vocabulary knowledge and grammatical knowledge variables made contributions to the prediction of reading comprehension performance, with vocabulary knowledge outperforming grammar in its predictive power. Implications and limitations of the study are also discussed in this study.