To what extent does grammar knowledge account for competence in FL reading comprehension in university students?

Resum

This study investigates the extent to which linguistic processes account for competence in reading comprehension in university students. The research questions addressed are how far grammar knowledge accounts for FL reading comprehension in university students and whether there are significant differences between reading comprehension performance and grammar knowledge performance; whether the type question accounts for any difference in the students' marks and if text topic influences the readers' performance. Although significant statistical correlation between the two variables was found, outcomes show that reading comprehension ability cannot substantially be determined by grammar knowledge at the level tested. The students' performance was worse in grammar tests than in reading comprehension. Some question types prove to be better predictors of overall scoring and achieve significantly higher marks than others. The text topic did not make any difference to the readers' performance.