THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SYNTACTIC KNOWLEDGE IN READING COMPREHENSION TEST PERFORMANCE

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 comprehension. 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 aren't any significant difference between males and females' scores on these two tests. These findings provided empirical support for the importance of syntactic knowledge in reading comprehension and have implications for EFL students, English language instructors, and curriculum experts.