Syntactic Knowledge, Vocabulary Breadth, and Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies in Reading Comprehension in Self- Regulated vs. Non-Self-Regulated Readers

This study was conducted to probe the predictive power of syntactic knowledge, vocabulary breadth, and metacognitive awareness of reading strategies in reading comprehension in self-regulated vs. non self-regulated EFL readers. A sample of Iranian EFL learners (N = 149) served as the participants who were divided into an experimental (self-regulated) group and a control (non-self-regulated) group. The experimental group received direct teaching of self-regulation strategies in reading accompanied by task-based instruction in ten sessions. We taught self-regulation strategies to the learners in the experimental group directly before the students performed the tasks that were designed based on self-regulation strategies proposed by Zimmerman (1989). The control group did not receive any treatment on self-regulation neither directly nor indirectly through tasks. Control group classes were conducted in traditional way, in a sense that they were only required to read the reading texts and do the follow-up activities of the book without any reference to self-regulation strategies. Regression analysis results showed the superiority of syntactic knowledge over vocabulary breadth, and metacognitive awareness of reading strategies in both groups. However, the findings illustrated that syntactic knowledge was a better predictor of reading comprehension in self-regulated group. Moreover, congruent with the interactive model of reading, the results suggest that both linguistic (lower-level) and non linguistic (higher-level) processes contributed significantly to reading comprehension. This investigation may offer useful perspectives on L2 reading comprehension, test score predictability, and test content validation.