Skip to main content

REVIEW article

Front. Psychol., 13 March 2023
Sec. Educational Psychology
This article is part of the Research Topic Reading and Writing Skills: Cognitive, Emotional, Creative, and Digital Approaches View all 41 articles

The relationship between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension: A meta-analysis

Haoyuan ZhengHaoyuan Zheng1Xuecong Miao,
Xuecong Miao2,3*Yang Dong
Yang Dong4*Daniel-Chongbo YuanDaniel-Chongbo Yuan5
  • 1Faculty of Teacher and Education, Guangzhou Huashang College (廣州華商學院), Guangzhou, China
  • 2Research Center for Overseas Studies and Media Reports on Hainan, Hainan University, Haikou, China
  • 3Faculty of Sociology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
  • 4Department of English, Hainan University, Haikou, China
  • 5Department of Literacy, Hong Kong Metropolitan University, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China

The study aimed to examine the cohesive tie effect on reading comprehension through the grammatical knowledge cognition process. The present meta-analysis examined the correlation between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension based on empirical results published between 1998 and 2021. This study selected 86 studies with a total of 14,852 readers whose grades were grouped from primary school to university. The results showed that the overall correlation effect size between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension was large, and the significant interaction effect of the grade group was confirmed through moderator analysis. The results suggested that the grammatical knowledge’s function of the cohesive tie has a transfer effect across different text comprehension scripts.

Introduction

Reading comprehension refers to an ability to acquire literal or inferential meaning from the given text through the interaction between sentences’ cognition process and situation image construction (Snow, 2002; Cain et al., 2004; Dong et al., 2021, 2022). Regardless of whether it an Eastern or a Western country, reading comprehension plays a vital role in human career development, knowledge base construction, and language ability development and even in printed script-based communication (Carretti et al., 2009; García and Cain, 2014; del Pilar Jiménez et al., 2019). As one kind of foundational knowledge and linguistic skill, grammatical knowledge could influence reading fluency and reading accuracy and further influence reading comprehension through discourse comprehension (e.g., Alderson, 2000, p. 37; Muter et al., 2004; Chik et al., 2012). Cohesive tie theory (Cain and Nash, 2011) suggests that grammatical knowledge generates a necessary inference for discourse comprehension through information integration. Reading stages theory (Chall, 1996) suggests that grammatical knowledge should have different effects on reading comprehension across different grade groups. Hjetland et al. (2019) and Zhang (2012) reported that the grade of primary and secondary school readers positively moderated the correlation between GK and reading comprehension. Moreover, cognitive condition theory (Tagarelli et al., 2011) suggested that the function of grammatical knowledge on the text comprehension process ought to be different between the first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) scripts due to literacy exposure. Zhang and Koda (2018) and Shibasaki et al. (2015) used the structural equation model to report that the GK contributed more to unfamiliar language scripts than to familiar scripts in text comprehension in school-age students. However, the interaction effects between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension across developed relations (grade group) and literacy exposure (language type) remain unclear. Moreover, extensive studies reported the inconsistent correlations between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension, and whether the variance could be explained by the interaction effect of reading stages or learning cognitive conditions requires further investigation. Therefore, the current study considered the meta-analytic approach to synthesize empirical studies, investigating the rule of cohesive tie function of grammatical knowledge on text comprehension.

Literature review

Grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension

Grammatical knowledge, in general, refers to knowing the rule of grammar application in reading text construction of verb form, word order, and sentence structure (Shiotsu, 2010; Purpura, 2013). Under the framework of the cohesive tie, past studies have confirmed grammatical knowledge as a prerequisite of efficient reading for reading both L1 and L2 texts (Grabe, 2009; Jeon and Yamashita, 2014). This is because grammatical knowledge determines the sentence structure and further impacts reading comprehension through the word function sequence (e.g., Gahl and Garnsey, 2004; Vinyals et al., 2015), which means that grammatical knowledge may assist individual word comprehension or semantic chunk comprehension when readers use the rule of sentence structure for decoding sentence meanings (Tunmer, 1989; Rego and Bryant, 1993); that is, the better the proficiency in grammatical knowledge application, the better the text reading comprehension performance. Readers could take the grammatical rule to assist text comprehension through the indirect contribution of text semantic meaning inference (Rego and Bryant, 1993).

A consensus has been reached on the fact that fully developed grammatical knowledge could allow readers to monitor syntactic information through text comprehension progress. The relationship between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension is associated with the reader’s ability to generate coherence in the text and monitor meaning acquisition during the reading process (Fender, 2001; Grabe and Stoller, 2012). For example, the grammatical clues offered coherence hints or information to aid readers in constructing text and understanding discourses (Zwaan and Rapp, 2006; Aryadoust and Baghaei, 2016), which indicates that the grammatical knowledge could be regarded as an ability to process syntactic structures and complicated sentences in text comprehension (Zwaan and Rapp, 2006; Aryadoust and Baghaei, 2016).

Previous studies, however, reported various results regarding the role of grammatical knowledge in text reading comprehension, from a strong correlation to a weak correlation. Some studies reported a strong correlation between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension (Bentin et al., 1990; Muter et al., 2004; Shiotsu and Weir, 2007; Kim and Cho, 2015). Conversely, other empirical surveys and experimental research reported a weak association due to the development effect of lexical inference (Kern, 1989; Kleeck, 2008; Zhang, 2012), knowledge base (Schatschneider et al., 2004; Silva and Cain, 2015; Brimo et al., 2017), and phonology knowledge (Demont and Gombert, 1996; Blackmore and Pratt, 1997; Farnia and Geva, 2013). Therefore, the correlation between grammatical knowledge and text reading comprehension was unclear.

Potential moderator selection

The current study selected grade group and language type as potential moderators for the following reasons.

Grade group

The Reading stages theory (Chall, 1996) claims that readers start learning to read in early primary school to become professional in reading to learn at university. Higher reading stages match more complicated requirements of text reading comprehension and proficiency in grammatical knowledge application. Previous studies also showed various results on the correlation between reading comprehension and grammatical knowledge. For example, Farnia and Geva (2013) reported that younger readers (grade 1) performed better in English grammatical knowledge tests than older readers (grades 4 and 6). However, it was unknown whether the variance could be explained by the grade group. Based on the reading stage statement (Chall, 1996) and previous reading ability development research (e.g., Mol and Bus, 2011), this study regarded grades 1–3 of primary school as group L; grades 4–6 as group H; and grades 7–12 as grade S. This was informed by García and Cain’s (2014) study which showed that readers had an independent reading ability development period in secondary school, and regarded university learning as grade U, respectively.

Language type

Learning cognitive condition statement suggested that the grammatical effect on text comprehension was involvement in noticing and processing the discourse structures (Tagarelli et al., 2011). Due to the familiarity effect on text scripts, more contribution of grammatical knowledge on text comprehension might be found in L2 than in L1 text comprehension tasks (Koda, 1992; Waltzman and Cairns, 2000). The language type might be an explanation of the various empirical correlation findings between reading comprehension and grammatical knowledge.

Past relevant meta-analytic review

In the past two decades, a few studies (e.g., Jeon and Yamashita, 2014) reviewed the contribution of grammatical knowledge to reading comprehension. For example, Rodd et al. (2015) used a meta-analytic approach to report the effects of localizing semantic grammatical knowledge and written comprehension on brain function. Jeon and Yamashita (2014) reported the correlation between grammatical knowledge and general L2 acquisition. However, past meta-analysis studies failed to solve the significant heterogeneity problem through the moderator analysis, which means that the theoretical contribution to the correlation between reading comprehension and grammatical knowledge requires further investigation. In addition, previous studies only selected a small number of empirical studies for correlation calculation, meaning that the selected studies were not representative. The current picture of the interaction effect with reading stage development and learning cognitive condition statement thus remains unclear.

The current study

This article extends the current literature concerning the influence of the developmental relations of grammatical knowledge on reading comprehension, investigating the overall correlation between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension from the recent research published in the past 20 years. This study further examines the interaction effects of the reading stage and learning cognitive condition on the correlation between reading comprehension and grammatical knowledge.

Method

The official guideline of the meta-analytic approach The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta–Analyses (PRISMA) was applied to this study, including the literature base, inclusion criteria, coding process, and meta-analytic procedure. The PRISMA is an official meta-analytic procedure guideline on meta-analysis implementation.

Literature base

To avoid the comprehension system mistake (García and Cain, 2014), this study only selected materials written in Chinese and English. The Chinese materials were selected from the CNKI database, which included almost all possible academic resources written in Chinese, and the English materials were searched from Google Scholar, PsycINFO, ERIC, and Pre-Quest. Relevant studies were identified through two groups of keywords; the first group of words was related to grammatical knowledge (grammar*, grammatical*, syntax*, syntactic*, oral cloze test*, sentence completion*, error recognition*, implicit knowledge*, and explicit knowledge*) and the second group of words was related to reading comprehension (sentence comprehension*, paragraph comprehension*, passage comprehension*, text comprehension*, reading comprehension*, reading ability*, comprehension ability*, reading acquisition*, reading performance*, comprehension ability*, and comprehension performance*). This study attempted to select all possible materials with publication dates from 1 January 1998 to 1 December 2022, including published or unpublished research articles, dissertations, and conference articles. Thus, 1,104 articles were selected from the database.

Inclusion criteria

Materials eligible for inclusion in this meta-analysis were as follows: (a) empirical studies with a minimum of 30 participants, (b) the selected studies should have correlation scores on the correlation between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension, (c) the participants should be students from grade 1 of primary school to undergraduate students, (d) students were not diagnosed with deaf or blind, (e) studies investigated the concurrent correlation between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension, (f) studies should provide enough indicators which could be transformed into Fisher’s z-transformation, and (g) grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension should come from the same scripts (e.g., L1 grammatical knowledge and L1 reading comprehension, L2 grammatical knowledge and L2 reading comprehension). If the grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension came from different scripts (e.g., L1 grammatical knowledge and L2 reading comprehension), the related study was removed. Thus, 128 articles fulfilled the inclusion criteria.

Coding process

Studies were coded according to the characteristics of the participants and the measurements by two independent coders. Coding was based on (a) study number, (b) first author’s name, (c) publication year, (d) material type (journal article or dissertation), (e) sampling area, (f) sample size, (g) grade group (L refers to grades 1–3 of primary school, H refers to grades 4–6 of primary school, S refers to secondary school, U refers to university), (h) target language scripts, and (i) correlation effect size. Any unclear information was emailed to the article’s author for clarification. Because this study did not investigate the transfer effect in grammatical knowledge and attempt to examine the hypothesis from the learning cognitive condition theory, the two coders were asked to remove those articles in which the grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension did not come from the same scripts, for example, the correlation between L1 grammatical knowledge and L2 reading comprehension. If one article provided more than one correlation that came from different grade groups, this study treated them as an independent study (Mol and Bus, 2011). If one article provided more than one available correlation indicator in the same grade group, first, this study preferred to select the correlation indicator from the standardized measurements than from the research-developed test. After this step, if the article still had more than one available indicator, Hedges et al. (2010) cluster regression was applied to calculate the final Fisher’s z-transformation for this study, ensuring that each study only provided one correlation indicator for further meta-analysis (Mol and Bus, 2011). The internal reliability for two independent coders was 0.96 in the first round of coding. The difference came from sampling area coding; however, this problem was solved by using the country’s name as the sampling area. Thus, 65 articles remained after the coding. Detailed information can be found in Table 1. All materials selected for the meta-analysis have been listed in references with “*.”

TABLE 1
www.frontiersin.org

Table 1. Moderators and outcomes for the matched set of self-report studies in meta-analysis.

Meta-analytic procedure

This study removed two articles conducted by Zhang (2011, 2012), and one study conducted by Brimo et al. (2017) due to the effect size, which was over 3.5 standard deviation (García and Cain, 2014). As a result, 62 articles with 86 studies were included in the final analysis. The researchers input the correlation indicator through comprehension meta-analysis 3.0 and transformed it into Fisher’s z for further analysis. This study selected Fisher’s z-transformation because z is approximately constant, and z has asymmetrical distribution (Borenstein et al., 2010). The values of Fisher’s z were 0.10 (r = 0.10), 0.31 (r = 0.30), and 0.50 (r = 0.50), denoting small effect size, moderate effect size, and large effect size, respectively (Borenstein et al., 2010).

This study used the random-effects model to report the effect size (Borenstein et al., 2010) and also reported a 95% confidence interval (CI). The effect size was interpreted as significant if the CI did not include zero. Next, the Q value was reported to examine the heterogeneity within materials. If the Q value reached a significant level (p < 0.05), then a meta-regression analysis was carried out to further analyze the effects of selected moderators (Hedges and Pigott, 2004; Borenstein et al., 2010). To compare the effect sizes across factors, this study applied the following equation to examine the difference of Teta (Durlak, 2009; Lenz, 2013): Teta = Diff / SE, Diff = z 1z 2, SE = sqrt (Variance z 1 + Variance z 2).

If |Teta| ≥ 2.58, the factor difference was interpreted as significant (p < 0.01). To examine publication bias, this study examined Rosenthal’s fail-safe number, a funnel plot through the trim-and-fill approach, the rank correlation test, and Egger’s regression test (Borenstein et al., 2010).

Results

Descriptive statistics

A total of 62 articles with 88 studies (N = 14,852) were included in this meta-analysis. In total, 16 studies were master’s dissertations and doctoral theses, and the other 72 studies were published in peer-reviewed journals. Specifically, 20 studies (n = 3,324) investigated the correlation between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension in group L, 16 studies (n = 2,749) reported the correlation in group H, 29 studies (n = 5,652) investigated the correlation in secondary school students (group S), and 21 studies (n = 2,747) examined the correlation in higher education students (group U). For language type, 41 studies (n = 6,505) investigated the correlation between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension in L1 scripts, and 47 studies (n = 8,347) focused on the relationship between L2 grammatical knowledge and L2 reading comprehension.

Meta-analysis

Table 2 provides the results of the correlation effect size between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension. The overall effect size was large (Fisher’s z = 0.54); however, the heterogeneity analysis showed that the materials’ heterogeneity was significant (Q = 271.48, p < 0.001). Moderator analysis through meta-regression showed that grade group explained 59% variance of materials’ heterogeneity and language type explained 13% variance of materials’ heterogeneity. Publication bias examination showed the effect size-distributed symmetry (see Figure 1): Rosenthal’s fail-safe number was 8,824, the tau value in the rank correlation test was insignificant (tau = 0.04, p > 0.05), and the intercept value in Egger’s regression test was not significant (intercept = 0.26, p > 0.05). The publication bias examination showed that the current study did not have significant publication bias.

TABLE 2
www.frontiersin.org

Table 2. Correlation of overall effect between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension with subgroup analysis.

FIGURE 1
www.frontiersin.org

Figure 1. A funnel plot of overall effect size.

Because the majority of materials’ heterogeneity resulted from the grade group, this study further investigated the correlation effect size between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension in four grade groups. Regarding group L, the results showed that the correlation effect size was moderate (Fisher’s z = 0.36). The heterogeneity analysis showed that the materials’ heterogeneity was not significant (Q = 23.29, p > 0.05). Publication bias examination showed the effect size-distributed symmetry (see Figure 2): Rosenthal’s fail-safe number was 1,935, the tau value in rank correlation test was insignificant (tau = 0.06, p > 0.05), and the intercept value in Egger’s regression test was not significant (intercept = 0.41, p > 0.05). the results showed that the current study did not have significant publication bias.

FIGURE 2
www.frontiersin.org

Figure 2. A funnel plot of group L effect size.

Regarding group H, the results showed the correlation effect size was nearly large (Fisher’s z = 0.49), and heterogeneity analysis showed that materials’ heterogeneity was not significant (Q = 11.52, p > 0.05). Publication bias examination showed the effect size-distributed symmetry (see Figure 3): Rosenthal’s fail-safe number was 2,255, the tau value in rank correlation test was insignificant (tau = 0.03, p > 0.05), and the intercept value in Egger’s regression test was not significant (intercept = 0.37, p > 0.05). The results showed that the current study did not have significant publication bias.

FIGURE 3
www.frontiersin.org

Figure 3. A funnel plot of group H effect size.

Regarding group S, the results showed that the correlation effect size was large (Fisher’s z = 0.61), and heterogeneity analysis showed that materials’ heterogeneity was not significant (Q = 9.81, p > 0.05). Publication bias examination showed the effect size-distributed symmetry (see Figure 4): Rosenthal’s fail-safe number was 2,555, the tau value in rank correlation test was insignificant (tau = −0.09, p > 0.05), and the intercept value in Egger’s regression test was not significant (intercept = −0.16, p > 0.05). The results showed that the current study did not have significant publication bias.

FIGURE 4
www.frontiersin.org

Figure 4. A funnel plot of group S effect size.

Regarding group U, the results showed the correlation effect size was large (Fisher’s z = 0.69), and heterogeneity analysis showed that materials’ heterogeneity was not significant (Q = 10.77, p > 0.05). Publication bias examination showed the effect size-distributed symmetry (see Figure 5): Rosenthal’s fail-safe number was 5,188, the tau value in rank correlation test was insignificant (tau = 0.14, p > 0.05), and the intercept value in Egger’s regression test was not significant (intercept = 0.36, p > 0.05). The results showed that the current study did not have significant publication bias.

FIGURE 5
www.frontiersin.org

Figure 5. A funnel plot of group U effect size.

Effect size comparison examination showed that the difference between each of the two groups’ effect size was significant (Teta H & L = 4.60, p < 0.01; Teta H &S = 4.90, p < 0.01; Teta S & U = 3.27, p < 0.01).

Discussion

The current study showed that the overall correlation effect size was large between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension. Effect size increased significantly from the lower grade group to the higher grade group and from moderate to large. The results indicated that the cohesive tie on text comprehension interacted significantly with the reading stage. At each reading stage, the interaction effect of learning cognitive condition was not significant on the correlation between reading comprehension and grammatical knowledge (Figure 6).

FIGURE 6
www.frontiersin.org

Figure 6. A flow diagram for materials search.

Grammatical knowledge on reading comprehension

A large effect size was found in the overall correlation between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension. Jeon and Yamashita (2014) reported that the correlation between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension in L2 scripts was extremely high (r = 0.85) in groups S and U, which was very different from the current results. Jeon and Yamashita (2014) had some obvious limitations. First, they only included 18 articles in their meta-analysis, and the results showed that the Q value from heterogeneity analysis was significant. Second, Jeon and Yamashita (2014) did not remove over 3.5 standard deviation effect sizes as the outlier, which showed that the correlation was unclear and did not generate convincing conclusions due to the significant heterogeneity problem. Through the literature search, the current results were consistent with most empirical studies, which showed that the average correlation between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension was nearly large (Mecartty, 2000; Gersten et al., 2001; Perfetti et al., 2005), indicating that the grammatical knowledge significantly determined the comprehension process. Moreover, this result informed how the cohesive tie function of grammatical knowledge might have great determining power on reassembling decoded words into phrases and clauses, allowing readers to be more efficient in detecting and correcting reading errors to enhance their comprehension process indirectly (e.g., Slobin, 1966; Bowey, 2005; Kempen et al., 2012).

Grade group effect

The current results showed that the higher grade group had a significantly larger effect size than the lower grade group. This result was consistent with the majority of past longitudinal studies (e.g., Oakhill et al., 2003; Farnia and Geva, 2013). The reasons for the consistency could be that the requirements, the complicated structure, and the organization level of text comprehension were higher in the higher grade group, resulting in the fact that the requirement of the cohesive tie function was higher in the text coherence clues process (Cain, 2003; Westerveld et al., 2008; Nuske and Bavin, 2015) and organization structure cognition (Oakhill and Cain, 2000; Vaughan and Dillon, 2006; Kendeou et al., 2007). This result informed that the function of the cohesive tie might continue developing after the age of 16, which was different from the majority of comprehension factors, such as decoding ability, vocabulary knowledge, and metalinguistic knowledge (Mol and Bus, 2011; García and Cain, 2014; Trapman et al., 2014). The current result also echoed reading stage theory regarding grammatical knowledge function on text reading comprehension, where the more complicated-level text comprehension needed a higher application of grammatical knowledge for coherence inference.

Language type effect

In each grade group, the language type was not a significant moderator on the correlation between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension. This result echoed the previous study, which showed that linguistic skills could work similarly across languages’ scripts (Cummins, 1986; Gottardo and Mueller, 2009; Perfetti and Stafura, 2014). In other words, grammatical knowledge could have a transfer effect across all languages, suggesting that grammatical knowledge had an independent cognition function on text comprehension. Readers received text information and delivered target comprehension information into the situation model-building process. The grammatical knowledge worked together with other linguistic skills on text meaning coherence, which indicates that this process encompassed the integrated process and the synthesizing process on word reading and sentence meaning judgment in situation model construction. According to the current results, grammatical knowledge may have an independent effect on reading comprehension across various scripts’ text reading, which means that, for bilingual learners’ reading comprehension, a transfer or compensation effect would help readers to apply either L1 or L2 grammatical knowledge to other language scripts’ comprehension (Sparks et al., 2008). Therefore, readers only need to fully develop grammatical knowledge in one language script, and then, the grammatical knowledge can work in other scripts’ text comprehension processes.

Limitations

The current study has several limitations. First, this study selected materials that were only written in Chinese or English. Materials written in other languages were not considered. Second, the selected materials only reported the correlation between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension in Chinese reading, Dutch reading, English reading, and French reading. Next, although past studies mentioned that grammatical knowledge should involve morphological knowledge and verb forms, due to inconclusive findings, this study excluded these two variables. In future studies, if the researcher has an agreed definition in the grammatical knowledge category, it should be further explored. Finally, meta-regression only presented how the extent of the heterogeneity of the materials could be explained by the moderator, while the interaction effect mechanism of each moderator was not identified. For example, this study reported that the grade group and language types were two significant moderators on the overall correlation but did not investigate the internal working interaction effect between these two moderators.

Conclusion

The study’s conclusions were drawn from the combined results of 86 studies conducted with more than 14,000 readers. The reading comprehension measures only included Chinese, Dutch, English, and French reading comprehension test in the current study’s database. To summarize, this meta-analysis confirmed that the overall correlation between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension was large (Fisher’s z = 0.54). The cohesive tie of the grammatical knowledge on reading comprehension had a significant interaction effect with the reading stage, and the higher requirement of reading comprehension showed higher function application of cohesive tie. The results indicated that the cohesive tie function of grammatical knowledge had a transfer effect across different scripts’ reading comprehension. The correlation pattern between grammatical knowledge and text reading comprehension was similar across Chinese, Dutch, English, and French scripts.

Author contributions

XM and YD had similar contribution, including data analysis and data collection. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Funding

This paper received financial support by intramural project of Guangzhou Huashang College (2021HSDS36).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

References

* Adlof, S. M., Catts, H. W., and Lee, J. (2010). Kindergarten predictors of second versus eighth grade reading comprehension impairments. J. Learn. Disabil. 43, 332–345. doi: 10.1177/0022219410369067

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Alderson, J. C. (2000). Assessing reading. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Google Scholar

* Aryadoust, V., and Baghaei, P. (2016). Does EFL Readers' lexical and grammatical knowledge predict their Reading ability? Insights from a perceptron artificial neural network study. Educ. Assess. 21, 135–156. doi: 10.1080/10627197.2016.1166343

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Bentin, S., Deutsch, A., and Liberman, I. Y. (1990). Syntactic competence and reading ability in children. J. Exp. Child Psychol. 49, 147–172. doi: 10.1016/0022-0965(90)90053-B

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Blackmore, A. M., and Pratt, C. (1997). Grammatical awareness and reading in grade 1 children. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly (1982-) 43, 567–590. doi: 10.1023/A:1024538123804

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Borenstein, M., Hedges, L. V., Higgins, J. P. T., and Rothstein, H. R. (2010). A basic introduction to fixed-effect and random-effects models for meta–analysis. Res. Synth. Methods 1, 97–111. doi: 10.1002/jrsm.12

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Bowey, J. A. (2005). Predicting individual differences in learning to read. The science of reading: A handbook. 155–172, Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Google Scholar

* Brimo, D., Apel, K., and Fountain, T. (2017). Examining the contributions of syntactic awareness and syntactic knowledge to reading comprehension. J. Res. Read. 40, 57–74. doi: 10.1111/1467-9817.12050

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Cain, K. (2003). Text comprehension and its relation to coherence and cohesion in children's fictional narratives. Br. J. Dev. Psychol. 21, 335–351. doi: 10.1348/026151003322277739

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Cain, K., and Nash, H. (2011). The influence of connectives on young readers’ processing and comprehension of text. J. Educ. Psychol. 103, 429–441. doi: 10.1037/a0022824

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Cain, K., Oakhill, J., and Bryant, P. (2004). Children's reading comprehension ability: concurrent prediction by working memory, verbal ability, and component skills. J. Educ. Psychol. 96, 31–42. doi: 10.1037/0022-0663.96.1.31

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Carretti, B., Borella, E., Cornoldi, C., and De Beni, R. (2009). Role of working memory in explaining the performance of individuals with specific reading comprehension difficulties: a meta-analysis. Learn. Individ. Differ. 19, 246–251. doi: 10.1016/j.lindif.2008.10.002

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Catts, H. W., Fey, M. E., Tomblin, J. B., and Zhang, X. (2002). A longitudinal investigation of reading outcomes in children with language impairments. J. Speech Lang. Hear. Res. 45, 1142–1157. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2002/093)

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Chall, J. (1996). Stages of reading development (2nd ed.). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace.

Google Scholar

* Chamberlain, C., and Mayberry, R. I. (2008). American sign language syntactic and narrative comprehension in skilled and less skilled readers: bilingual and bimodal evidence for the linguistic basis of reading. Appl. Psycholinguist. 29, 367–388. doi: 10.1017/S014271640808017X

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Chaney, C. (1998). Preschool language and metalinguistic skills are links to reading success. Appl. Psycholinguist. 19, 433–446. doi: 10.1017/s0142716400010250

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Chen, B. G., and Chen, Y. L. (2008). The relationships of primary school students’ syntactic awareness and phonological awareness with their performance of Reading comprehension. Psychol. Sci. 31, 892–895. doi: 10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.2008.04.022

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Chik, P. P. M., Ho, C. S. H., Yeung, P. S., Chan, D. W. O., Chung, K. K. H., and Luan, H.,.. & Lau, W. S. Y. (2012). Syntactic skills in sentence reading comprehension among Chinese elementary school children. Read. Writ., 25, 679–699. doi: 10.1007/s11145-010-9293-4

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Chung, K. K., Ho, C. S. H., Chan, D. W., Tsang, S. M., and Lee, S. H. (2013). Contributions of syntactic awareness to reading in Chinese-speaking adolescent readers with and without dyslexia. Dyslexia 19, 11–36. doi: 10.1002/dys.1448

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Cummins, J. (1986). Empowering minority students: a framework for intervention. Harv. Educ. Rev. 56, 18–37. doi: 10.1080/0013191860380107

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Cutting, L. E., Materek, A., Cole, C. A., Levine, T. M., and Mahone, E. M. (2009). Effects of fluency, oral language, and executive function on reading comprehension performance. Ann. Dyslexia 59, 34–54. doi: 10.1007/s11881-009-0022-0

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

del Pilar Jiménez, E., Alarcón, R., and de Vicente-Yague, M. I. (2019). Reading intervention: correlation between emotional intelligence and reading competence in high school students. Revista de Psicodidáctica (English Ed.) 24, 24–30. doi: 10.1016/j.psicoe.2018.10.001

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Demont, E., and Gombert, J. E. (1996). Phonological awareness as a predictor of recoding skills and syntactic awareness as a predictor of comprehension skills. Br. J. Educ. Psychol. 66, 315–332. doi: 10.1111/j.2044-8279.1996.tb01200.x

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Deng, J. (2014). The influence of syntactic knowledge, vocabulary breadth and vocabulary depth on Reading comprehension-evidence from Chinese EFL students. Master dissertation. Fujian: Fujian Normal University.

Google Scholar

Dong, Y., Chow, B. W. Y., Mo, J., Zheng, H. Y., Wu, S. X. Y., and Yang, J. (2022). Comprehension of quantifier sentences in poor readers with different levels of arithmetic proficiency. Read. Writ. 1–22. doi: 10.1007/s11145-022-10344-9

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Dong, Y., Chow, B. W. Y., Wu, S. X. Y., Zhou, J. D., and Zhao, Y. M. (2021). Enhancing poor readers’ reading comprehension ability through word semantic knowledge training. Read. Writ. Q. 37, 348–364. doi: 10.1080/10573569.2020.1820410

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Durlak, J. A. (2009). How to select, calculate, and interpret effect sizes. J. Pediatr. Psychol. 34, 917–928. doi: 10.1093/jpepsy/jsp004

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Farnia, F., and Geva, E. (2013). Growth and predictors of change in English language learners' reading comprehension. J. Res. Read. 36, 389–421. doi: 10.1111/jrir.12003

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Fender, M. (2001). A review of L1 and L2/ESL word integration skills and the nature of L2/ESL word integration development involved in lower-level text processing. Lang. Learn. 51, 319–396. doi: 10.1111/0023-8333.00157

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Foorman, B. R., Koon, S., Petscher, Y., Mitchell, A., and Truckenmiller, A. (2015). Examining general and specific factors in the dimensionality of oral language and reading in 4th–10th grades. J. Educ. Psychol. 107, 884–899. doi: 10.1037/edu0000026

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Gahl, S., and Garnsey, S. M. (2004). Knowledge of grammar, knowledge of usage: syntactic probabilities affect pronunciation variation. Language 80, 748–775. doi: 10.1353/lan.2004.0185

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

García, J. R., and Cain, K. (2014). Decoding and reading comprehension: a meta-analysis to identify which reader and assessment characteristics influence the strength of the relationship in English. Rev. Educ. Res. 84, 74–111. doi: 10.3102/0034654313499616

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Gersten, R., Fuchs, L. S., Williams, J. P., and Baker, S. (2001). Teaching reading comprehension strategies to students with learning disabilities: a review of research. Rev. Educ. Res. 71, 279–320. doi: 10.2307/3516086

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Geva, E., and Farnia, F. (2012). Developmental changes in the nature of language proficiency and reading fluency paint a more complex view of reading comprehension in ELL and EL1. Read. Writ. 25, 1819–1845. doi: 10.1007/s11145-011-9333-8

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Goff, D. A., Pratt, C., and Ong, B. (2005). The relations between children’s reading comprehension, working memory, language skills and components of reading decoding in a normal sample. Read. Writ. 18, 583–616. doi: 10.1007/s11145-004-7109-0

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Gong, S. Y., Xu, X. C., and Liu, H. S. (2010). The relationship between English syntactic awareness, Reading comprehension monitoring and contextual information use. Psychol. Explor. 30, 34–38. doi: 10.3969/j.issn.1003-5184.2010.03.008

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Gong, S. Y., Xu, X. C., Ye, J., and Han, Y. P. (2009). The relationship between English phonological and syntactic awareness working memory and English Reading in grade one of junior middle school. J. Educ. Sci. Hunan Norm. Univ. 8, 91–95.

Google Scholar

* Gottardo, A., and Mueller, J. (2009). Are first-and second-language factors related in predicting second-language reading comprehension? A study of Spanish-speaking children acquiring English as a second language from first to second grade. J. Educ. Psychol. 101, 330–344. doi: 10.1037/a0014320

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Grabe, W. (2009). Reading in a second language: Moving from theory to practice. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Google Scholar

Grabe, W., & Stoller, F. L.. (2012). Teaching and researching reading. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. Beijing.

Google Scholar

* Guan, F. (2007). The influence of meta-language awareness on Students' English Reading. J. Liaoning Teach. Coll. 2007, 75–76. doi: 10.3969/j.issn.1008-3898.2007.01.040

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Gui, M. (2018). The impact of component skills on Chinese foreign language learners’ Reading comprehension under component skills analysis. J. PLA Univ. Foreign Lang. 41, 99–107.

Google Scholar

Hedges, L. V., and Pigott, T. D. (2004). The power of statistical tests for moderators in meta-analysis. Psychol. Methods 9, 426–445. doi: 10.1037/1082-989x.9.4.426

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Hedges, L. V., Tipton, E., and Johnson, M. C. (2010). Robust variance estimation in meta-regression with dependent effect size estimates. Res. Synth. Methods 1, 39–65. doi: 10.1002/jrsm.5

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Hjetland, H. N., Lervåg, A., Lyster, S. A. H., Hagtvet, B. E., Hulme, C., and Melby-Lervåg, M. (2019). Pathways to reading comprehension: a longitudinal study from 4 to 9 years of age. J. Educ. Psychol. 111, 751–763. doi: 10.1037/edu0000321

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Jafari, A. M., and Rad, N. F. (2016). The influence of phonological and grammatical awareness on EFL students' reading performance. J. Lang. Teach. Res. 7, 1164–1173. doi: 10.17507/jltr.0706.14

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Jeon, E. H., and Yamashita, J. (2014). L2 reading comprehension and its correlates: a meta-analysis. Lang. Learn. 64, 160–212. doi: 10.1111/lang.12034

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Jiang, X. F. (2003). The study on the influence of phonological awareness and syntactic awareness in Student’s English Reading. Master dissertation. Chongqing: Southwest China Normal University.

Google Scholar

Kempen, G., Olsthoorn, N., and Sprenger, S. (2012). Grammatical workspace sharing during language production and language comprehension: evidence from grammatical multitasking. Lang. Cogn. Process. 27, 345–380. doi: 10.1080/01690965.2010.544583

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Kendeou, P., Van Den Broek, P., White, M. J., and Lynch, J. (2007). “Comprehension in preschool and early elementary children: skill development and strategy interventions” in Reading comprehension strategies: theories, interventions, and technologies. ed. D. S. McNamara (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers), 27–45.

Google Scholar

Kern, R. G. (1989). Second language reading strategy instruction: its effects on comprehension and word inference ability. Mod. Lang. J. 73, 135–149. doi: 10.2307/326569

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Kim, Y. S., Al Otaiba, S., Puranik, C., Folsom, J. S., Greulich, L., and Wagner, R. K. (2011). Componential skills of beginning writing: an exploratory study. Learn. Individ. Differ. 21, 517–525. doi: 10.1016/j.lindif.2011.06.004

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Kim, J., and Cho, Y. (2015). Proficiency effects on relative roles of vocabulary and grammar knowledge in second language Reading. English Teach. 70, 75–96.

Google Scholar

Kleeck, A. V. (2008). Providing preschool foundations for later reading comprehension: the importance of and ideas for targeting inferencing in storybook-sharing interventions. Psychol. Sch. 45, 627–643. doi: 10.1002/pits.20314

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Koda, K. (1992). The effects of lower-level processing skills on FL reading performance: implications for instruction. Mod. Lang. J. 76, 502–512. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-4781.1992.tb05400.x

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Lasagabaster, D. (2001). The effect of knowledge about the L1 on foreign language skills and grammar. Int. J. Biling. Educ. Biling. 4, 310–331. doi: 10.1080/13670050108667735

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Leider, C. M., Proctor, C. P., Silverman, R. D., and Harring, J. R. (2013). Examining the role of vocabulary depth, cross-linguistic transfer, and types of reading measures on the reading comprehension of Latino bilinguals in elementary school. Read. Writ. 26, 1459–1485. doi: 10.1007/s11145-013-9427-6

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Lenz, A. S. (2013). Calculating effect size in single-case research: a comparison of nonoverlap methods. Meas. Eval. Couns. Dev. 46, 64–73. doi: 10.1177/0748175612456401

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Lesaux, N. K., Lipka, O., and Siegel, L. S. (2006). Investigating cognitive and linguistic abilities that influence the reading comprehension skills of children from diverse linguistic backgrounds. Read. Writ. 19, 99–131. doi: 10.1007/s11145-005-4713-6

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Li, J. D., Li, K., and Chen, Q. Z. (2008). A research on the relationship between the second and third language of minority students in Xinjiang Normal university. J. Xinjiang Norm. Univ. 29, 129–132.

Google Scholar

* Li, R. B., Li, G. Z., Su, Y. K., and Wang, B. C. (2016). Effects of language experience on dialect(s)-speaking Children’s metalinguistic awareness and linguistic competence. Appl. Linguis. 1, 26–35.

Google Scholar

* Liao, R. Y. (2012). Research into factors influencing students’ Reading ability in English. Master dissertation. Nanjing: Nanjing Normal University.

Google Scholar

* Lu, M., and Zhang, H. (2015). The relationship between English meta-linguistic awareness, vocabulary knowledge and Reading comprehension of junior middle school students. J. PLA Univ. Foreign Lang. 38, 74–80.

Google Scholar

* Luo, Y. P. (2010). Relationship between English phonological and syntactic awareness and English Reading ability among college students. Master dissertation. Guangxi: Guangxi Normal University.

Google Scholar

Mecartty, F. H. (2000). Lexical and grammatical knowledge in reading and listening comprehension by foreign language learners of Spanish. Appl. Lang. Learn. 11, 323–348.

Google Scholar

* Mokhtari, K., and Niederhauser, D. S. (2013). Vocabulary and syntactic knowledge factors in 5th grade students' reading comprehension. Int. Electron. J. Element. Educ. 5, 157–170.

Google Scholar

Mol, S. E., and Bus, A. G. (2011). To read or not to read: a meta-analysis of print exposure from infancy to early adulthood. Psychol. Bull. 137, 267–296. doi: 10.1037/a0021890

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Muter, V., Hulme, C., Snowling, M. J., and Stevenson, J. (2004). Phonemes, rimes, vocabulary, and grammatical skills as foundations of early reading development: evidence from a longitudinal study. Dev. Psychol. 40, 665–681. doi: 10.1037/0012-1649.40.5.665

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Nuske, H. J., and Bavin, E. L. (2015). Narrative comprehension in 4–7-year-old children with autism: testing the weak central coherence account. Int. J. Lang. Commun. Disord. 46, 100824014249025–100824014249119. doi: 10.3109/13682822.2010.484847

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Oakhill, J., and Cain, K. (2000). Children's difficulties in text comprehension: assessing causal issues. J. Deaf. Stud. Deaf. Educ. 5, 51–59. doi: 10.1093/deafed/5.1.51

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Oakhill, J. V., and Cain, K. (2012). The precursors of reading ability in young readers: evidence from a four-year longitudinal study. Sci. Stud. Read. 16, 91–121. doi: 10.1080/10888438.2010.529219

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Oakhill, J. V., Cain, K., and Bryant, P. E. (2003). The dissociation of word reading and text comprehension: evidence from component skills. Lang. Cogn. Process. 18, 443–468. doi: 10.1080/01690960344000008

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* O'connor, I. M., and Klein, P. D. (2004). Exploration of strategies for facilitating the reading comprehension of high-functioning students with autism spectrum disorders. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 34, 115–127. doi: 10.1023/b:jadd.0000022603.44077.6b

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Park, H., Choi, S., and Lee, M. (2012). Visual input enhancement, attention, grammar learning, & Reading comprehension: an eye movement study. English Teach. 67, 241–265. doi: 10.15858/engtea.67.4.201212.241

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Perfetti, C. A., Landi, N., and Oakhill, J. (2005). “The acquisition of reading comprehension skill” in The science of reading: a handbook. eds. M. J. Snowling and C. Hulme (Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishing), 227–247.

Google Scholar

Perfetti, C., and Stafura, J. (2014). Word knowledge in a theory of reading comprehension. Sci. Stud. Read. 18, 22–37. doi: 10.1080/10888438.2013.827687

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Proctor, C. P., Silverman, R. D., Harring, J. R., and Montecillo, C. (2012). The role of vocabulary depth in predicting reading comprehension among English monolingual and Spanish–English bilingual children in elementary school. Read. Writ. 25, 1635–1664. doi: 10.1007/s11145-011-9336-5

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Purpura, J. E.. (2013). Assessing grammar. The companion to language assessment. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Google Scholar

Rego, L. L. B., and Bryant, P. E. (1993). The connection between phonological, syntactic and semantic skills and children’s reading and spelling. Eur. J. Psychol. Educ. 8, 235–246. doi: 10.1007/BF03174079

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Rescorla, L. (2000). Do late-talking toddlers turn out to have reading difficulties a decade later? Ann. Dyslexia 50, 85–102. doi: 10.1007/s11881-000-0018-2

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Rescorla, L. (2002). Language and reading outcomes to age 9 in late-talking toddlers. J. Speech Lang. Hear. Res. 45, 360–371. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2002/028)

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Rodd, J. M., Vitello, S., Woollams, A. M., and Adank, P. (2015). Localising semantic and syntactic processing in spoken and written language comprehension: an activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis. Brain Lang. 141, 89–102. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2014.11.012

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Roth, F. P., Speece, D. L., and Cooper, D. H. (2002). A longitudinal analysis of the connection between oral language and early reading. J. Educ. Res. 95, 259–272. doi: 10.1080/00220670209596600

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Schatschneider, C., Fletcher, J. M., Francis, D. J., Carlson, C. D., and Foorman, B. R. (2004). Kindergarten prediction of reading skills: a longitudinal comparative analysis. J. Educ. Psychol. 96, 265–282. doi: 10.1037/0022-0663.96.2.265

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Shen, Y. L. (2014). The relative significance of vocabulary breadth and syntactic knowledge in the prediction of Reading comprehension test performance. J. Hefei Norm. Univ. 4, 87–92. doi: 10.3969/j.issn.1674-2273.2014.04.018

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Shen, Y. L., and Tao, W. (2011). The relative significance of vocabulary breadth and syntactic knowledge in the prediction of Reading comprehension test performance. Chinese J. Appl. Linguist. 34, 113–126.

Google Scholar

Shibasaki, H., Tokimoto, S., Ono, Y., Inoue, T., and Tamaoka, K. (2015). English reading comprehension by Japanese high school students: structural equation modeling including working memory and L1 literacy. Open J. Modern Linguist. 05, 443–458. doi: 10.4236/ojml.2015.55039

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Shiotsu, T. (2010). Components of L2 reading: Linguistic and processing factors in the reading test performances of Japanese EFL learners. Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Sprachen.

Google Scholar

* Shiotsu, T., and Weir, C. J. (2007). The relative significance of syntactic knowledge and vocabulary breadth in the prediction of reading comprehension test performance. Lang. Test. 24, 99–128. doi: 10.1177/0265532207071513

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Silva, M., and Cain, K. (2015). The relations between lower and higher level comprehension skills and their role in prediction of early reading comprehension. J. Educ. Psychol. 107, 321–331. doi: 10.1037/a0037769

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Silverman, R. D., Proctor, C. P., Harring, J. R., Hartranft, A. M., Doyle, B., and Zelinke, S. B. (2015). Language skills and reading comprehension in English monolingual and Spanish–English bilingual children in grades 2–5. Read. Writ. 28, 1381–1405. doi: 10.1007/s11145-015-9575-y

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Slobin, D. I. (1966). Grammatical transformations and sentence comprehension in childhood and adulthood. J. Verbal Learn. Verbal Behav. 5, 219–227. doi: 10.1016/S0022-5371(66)80023-3

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Snow, C. E. (2002). Reading for understanding: Toward a research and development program in reading comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.

Google Scholar

Sparks, R. L., Patton, J., Ganschow, L., Humbach, N., and Javorsky, J. (2008). Early first-language reading and spelling skills predict later second-language reading and spelling skills. J. Educ. Psychol. 100, 162–174. doi: 10.1037/0022-0663.100.1.162

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Tagarelli, K. M., Borges Mota, M., and Rebuschat, P. (2011). “The role of working memory in the implicit and explicit learning of languages” in Proceedings of the 33rd annual conference of the cognitive science society. eds. L. Carlson, C. Hölscher, and T. F. Shipley (Austin, EX: Cognitive Science Society), 2061–2066.

Google Scholar

* Tang, Y. (2013). A study of the function of explicit and implicit grammatical knowledge in senior grade one students’ Reading comprehension and the implication on grammar instruction. Master dissertation. Tianjin: Tianjin Normal University.

Google Scholar

Trapman, M., Van Gelderen, A., Van Steensel, R., Van Schooten, E., and Hulstijn, J. (2014). Linguistic knowledge, fluency and meta-cognitive knowledge as components of reading comprehension in adolescent low achievers: differences between monolinguals and bilinguals. J. Res. Read. 37, S3–S21. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9817.2012.01539.x

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Tunmer, W. E. (1989). The role of language-related factors in reading disability. in D. Shankweiler and I. Y. Liberman (Eds.), Phonology and reading disability: solving the reading puzzle, 91–131. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.

Google Scholar

* Van Gelderen, A., Schoonen, R., De Glopper, K., Hulstijn, J., Simis, A., Snellings, P., et al. (2004). Linguistic knowledge, processing speed, and metacognitive knowledge in first-and second-language Reading comprehension: a componential analysis. J. Educ. Psychol. 96, 19–30. doi: 10.1037/0022-0663.96.1.19

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Van Gelderen, A., Schoonen, R., De Glopper, K., Hulstijn, J., Snellings, P., Simis, A., et al. (2003). Roles of linguistic knowledge, metacognitive knowledge and processing speed in L3, L2 and L1 reading comprehension: a structural equation modeling approach. Int. J. Biling. 7, 7–25. doi: 10.1177/13670069030070010201

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Vaughan, M. W., and Dillon, A. (2006). Why structure and genre matter for users of digital information: a longitudinal experiment with readers of a web-based newspaper. Int. J. Human-Comput. Stud. 64, 502–526. doi: 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2005.11.002

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Vellutino, F. R., Tunmer, W. E., Jaccard, J. J., and Chen, R. (2007). Components of reading ability: multivariate evidence for a convergent skills model of reading development. Sci. Stud. Read. 11, 3–32. doi: 10.1207/s1532799xssr1101_2

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Vinyals, O., Kaiser, Ł., Koo, T., Petrov, S., Sutskever, I., and Hinton, G. (2015). Grammar as a foreign language. arXiv.org. Retrieved February 28, 2023, from https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.7449.

Google Scholar

Waltzman, D. E., and Cairns, H. S. (2000). Grammatical knowledge of third grade good and poor readers. Appl. Psycholinguist. 21, 263–284. doi: 10.1017/S014271640000206X

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Wang, K. Y. (2001). The relationships between phonological, syntactic and semantic skills in English Reading performance of Chinese middle school students. Master dissertation. Gansu: Northwest Normal University.

Google Scholar

* Wang, C. Y. (2012). A study of the correlation between explicit grammatical knowledge, implicit grammatical knowledge and Reading comprehension ability of senior high school students. Master dissertation. Anhui: Anhui University.

Google Scholar

* Wei, Y. Z. (2005). Correlation between grammatical sensitivity and reading comprehension in Chinese English learners. Foreign Lang. World 1, 40–46.

Google Scholar

Westerveld, M. F., Gillon, G. T., and Moran, C. (2008). A longitudinal investigation of oral narrative skills in children with mixed reading disability. Int. J. Speech Lang. Pathol. 10, 132–145. doi: 10.1080/14417040701422390

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Whyte, E. M., Nelson, K. E., and Scherf, K. S. (2014). Idiom, syntax, and advanced theory of mind abilities in children with autism spectrum disorders. J. Speech Lang. Hear. Res. 57, 120–130. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2013/12-0308)

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Wu, S. N. (2016). Influence of vocabulary, syntactic and metacognitive awareness of Japanese students on their Chinese Reading comprehension. Lang. Teach. Linguist. Stud. 2, 59–66.

Google Scholar

* Xiang, T. C. (2016). The influence of syntactic awareness on the English Reading comprehension of students with learning disabilities in junior middle school and an intervention. Master dissertation. Shaanxi: Shaanxi Normal University.

Google Scholar

* Yan, L. (2012). A comparative study on the effects of lexical chunks recognition and syntax identification on Reading comprehension. Master dissertation. Chengdu: Southwest Petroleum University.

Google Scholar

* Zhang, Y. X. (2011). Vocabulary knowledge, grammatical knowledge, working memory and EFL Reading comprehension. Master dissertation. Shanghai: Shanghai Jiaotong University.

Google Scholar

Zhang, D. (2012). Vocabulary and grammar knowledge in second language reading comprehension: a structural equation modeling study. Mod. Lang. J. 96, 558–575. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-4781.2012.01398.x

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Zhang, Y. H. (2017). The effects of metalinguistic awareness on college English Reading comprehension. Master dissertation. Jinan: Shandong University.

Google Scholar

Zhang, H., and Koda, K. (2018). Vocabulary knowledge and morphological awareness in Chinese as a heritage language (CHL) reading comprehension ability. Read. Writ. 31, 53–74. doi: 10.1007/s11145-017-9773-x

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

* Zhang, D. B., and Zhao, S. H. (2011). Implicit and explicit grammatical knowledge in second language reading comprehension: a study of advanced Chinese EFL learners. Foreign Lang. Teach. Res. 43, 387–399.

Google Scholar

Zwaan, R., and Rapp, D. (2006). “Discourse comprehension” in Handbook of psycholinguistics. eds. M. Traxler and M. A. Gernsbacher 2nd ed (Burlington, MA: Academic Press), 725–764.

Google Scholar

Keywords: grammatical knowledge, reading comprehension, reading stage, learning cognitive condition, mental model, meta-analysis

Citation: Zheng H, Miao X, Dong Y and Yuan D-C (2023) The relationship between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension: A meta-analysis. Front. Psychol. 14:1098568. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1098568

Received: 15 November 2022; Accepted: 16 February 2023;
Published: 13 March 2023.

Edited by:

Elena Jiménez-Pérez, University of Malaga, Spain

Reviewed by:

Macarena Becerra, University of Malaga, Spain
Weiwei Zhang, Quzhou University, China
Fareeha Javed, Government of Punjab, Pakistan
Sara Kashefian-Naeeini, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Iran
Andrew Philominraj, Universidad Católica del Maule, Chile

Copyright © 2023 Zheng, Miao, Dong and Yuan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Xuecong Miao, xuecong_phd@163.com; Yang Dong, yangdong3-c@my.cityu.edu.hk

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.