A study of the relationship between students' knowledge of grammatical structure and ability in reading comprehension

Abstract

Statement of the Problem A common problem is the failure of the students to understand the material read. This not only affects their performance in English classes but also in other content subjects. Bansuela expressed this problem in two questions stated thus: 1) Why do many pupils find it difficult to comprehend what they read?, 2) Why is it hard for them to understand sentences and paragraphs?" He gave four answers to the first questions: 1. Pupils lack the ability to know the meaning of a word or words and the proper usage; 2. They lack the ability to comprehend thought units and the thought that is formulated is twisted, without sense; 3. They find it difficult to apply the knowledge of sentence construction to English sentences which emphasize the use of the subject before the predicate since in Pilipino, most often the “predicate comes before the subject;" 4. They have noticed that some English words like two, to, too have similar sound but different meanings. Since sentence construction in Pilipino has an effect on English, especially when the students apply knowledge of Pilipino sentence structure to English sentences, they meet with difficulties in comprehending what they read. The investigator deemed it necessary to investigate the relationship, if any, existing between students' knowledge of English grammatical structure and ability in reading comprehension in English when intelligence and socio-economic status of parents of high school students are controlled. This study sought to answer the following questions: 1. Is knowledge of grammatical structure related to reading ability when intelligence and socio-economic status of parents of high school students are controlled? 2. Is knowledge of grammatical structure related to reading ability when age is controlled? 3. How much of the relationship is explained by each of the intervening variables of mental ability and socio-economic status? To answer the above questions, the following questions had also to be answered? a. Is mental ability related to reading ability? b. Is socio-economic status related to knowledge of grammatical structure? c. Is mental ability related to knowledge of grammatical structure? d. Is socio-economic status related to reading ability? e. Is mental ability related to socioeconomic status? f. Is age related to knowledge of grammatical structure? g. Is reading ability related to age?