Relating students' spoken language and reading comprehension

This paper focuses on a comparison of the degree of lexical and grammatical complexity in students' spoken language and their reading comprehension scores from the New South Wales Basic Skills Test. The research involved interviews with a broad range of students regarding their comprehension of texts in the Basic Skills Tests for Year 3 and Year 5 students (Daly, 2011). Spoken language complexity was measured according to the number and percentage of dependent clauses and instances of non-core words used by students during interviews. When Pearson Correlation statistics were conducted, significant correlations showed there was a relationship between the students' reading comprehension scores and complexity in both their spoken words and sentence structure. These findings support the work of Munro (2011) who found that many students with low reading comprehension benefited from a focus on both grammar and vocabulary while developing the students' expression and reception of oral language. Correlations were also significant when conducted separately for Indigenous students and non-Indigenous students. This paper discusses the possible reasons for the results, their implications and recommendations for improving reading comprehension.