How Problems of Reading Fuency and Comprehension are Related to Difficulties… 73

How Problems of Reading Fluency and Comprehension

Are Related to Difficulties in Syntactic Awareness Skills
Among Fifth Graders

Kouider Mokhtari
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio
H. Brian Thompson
Limestone Elementary School, Sand Springs, Oklahoma

Abstract

In this study, we assessed and analyzed 5th grade students’ levels of

syntactic awareness in relation to their reading fluency and
comprehension. The aim was to examine the role of syntactic
awareness (children’s awareness of the syntactic structure of sentences
and their ability to reflect on and manipulate that structure) as a
potential source of reading fluency and comprehension difficulty for
these readers. We found that the students’ levels of syntactic awareness
were significantly related to their reading fluency (r= .625) and reading
comprehension performance (r= .816). These relationships indicate that
lower levels of syntactic awareness correspond to poor reading fluency
and poor comprehension among these readers. These findings have
important implications for research and instruction addressing the
relative contributions of broader language skills to the development of
reading fluency and comprehension among struggling readers.

Introduction

The ability to read fluently and with adequate comprehension is

considered the hallmark of skilled reading. Both fluent reading and
comprehension skills have been shown to depend to some degree on the
readers’ sensitivity to the phonemic structure of language (e.g., Adams,
1990; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). This important association between
skilled reading and sensitivity to the phonemic structure of spoken
language has been quite well documented in experimental, clinical, and
developmental training studies (for a comprehensive review see Adams,
1990; Goswami & Bryant, 1990). For instance, the longitudinal studies
investigating the relationship between phonological awareness and reading
development indicate that different aspects of phonological awareness at
various ages can predict reading abilities in school-age children (e.g.,
Bryant, Nunes, & Bindman, 1998). In addition, comparison studies with
74 Reading Research and Instruction, Volume 46, No. 1 * Fall 2006

children and adults have shown that good readers often outperform poor
readers on measures of phonemic awareness (e.g., Torgesen, Wagner, &
Rashotte, 1994; Vellutino, & Scanlon, 1991). Finally, intervention studies
show that specific instruction in phonemic awareness tasks such as letter-
sound identification and manipulation improve reading and spelling
abilities (e.g. Vellutino, Scanlon, Sipay, Small, Pratt, Chen, & Denkla,
1996).
However, despite the large body of evidence pointing to a close
relationship between children’s phonemic awareness and reading
development, little is known about the potential role of broader language
skills (e.g., morphological and syntactic awareness) in the development of
reading fluency and reading comprehension ability. One limitation of the
existing research, according to Nation & Snowling (2000) is that poor
decoding skills appear to have been confounded with poor reading
comprehension, making it difficult to sort out possible causal relationships
between these two aspects of reading. In other words, the customary co-
occurrence of poor word decoding and poor comprehension skills may
have obscured the role played by broader language skills in reading
development. A second limitation relates to the lack of clarity of the
importance and relevance of reading fluency and its relation to both
reading comprehension and syntactic skills, especially in light of recent
research advances on the relation between reading comprehension and
broader language skills with particular focus on sentence and text-level
skills.
Recent and emerging research on the role of broader language
skills on reading ability have shown that the ability to read fluently and
with adequate comprehension remains a challenge for many normally
developing and struggling readers despite demonstrated mastery of basic
abilities in word decoding and phonemic awareness skills. In a study
examining the factors influencing syntactic awareness among poor and
normal comprehenders, Nation and Snowling (2000) point out that
“Although in the general population comprehension and
reading accuracy are strongly correlated (with correlation
coefficients varying between 0.3 and 0.6; see Juel, Griffith,
& Gough, 1983), studies have shown that approximately
10% of children can be classified as having poor reading
comprehension, despite possessing average-for-age reading
accuracy (Nation & Snowling, 1997; Yuill & Oakhill,
1991, p. 230).”
 How Problems of Reading Fuency and Comprehension are Related to Difficulties… 75

Language and literacy researchers (e.g., Bentin, Deutsch, &

Liberman, 1990; Cain & Oakhill, 2004; Demont & Gombert, 1996;
Leikin, 2002; Nation, Clarke, & Snowling, 2002; Stothard & Hulme,
1992; Yuill & Oakhill, 1991) generally agree that text comprehension is a
complex task that involves a number of cognitive, linguistic, and socio-
cultural dimensions. This view is consistent with the model of reading
comprehension articulated in the Rand Reading Study Group report (2001)
in which comprehension is viewed as “the process of simultaneously
extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement
with written language” and reading fluency is “conceptualized as both an
antecedent to and a consequence of comprehension” (p. 11). According to
this report, “some components of reading fluency—quick and efficient
recognition of words and at least some aspects of syntactic parsing—
appear to be prerequisites for comprehension” (p. 35). The report
cautioned that recent efforts to improve early reading achievement through
skills-based instruction could be undermined unless a greater emphasis is
placed on teaching children reading comprehension skills and strategies
that go beyond basic skills, particularly phonemic awareness and phonics.
Kuhn & Stahl (2003) recently suggested that proficient reading
requires more than automaticity of individual word decoding. They
maintain that fluency development, defined as not only accuracy and
automaticity of individual word decoding but also as prosodic
interpretation of the text being read, is needed for children to comprehend
what they read. Kuhn & Stahl (2003) argued that to be able to read
prosodically or with proper expression, children must be able to do more
than decode words and translate text signals into speech. They concur with
other researchers (e.g., Dowhower, 1987; Schreiber, 1980, 1987, 1991)
that readers must demonstrate an understanding of the syntactic structures
of text by chunking groups of words into phrases or meaningful syntactic
units. They must also incorporate a set of suprasegmental features (e.g.,
stress and intonation patterns) that both speakers and hearers would
interpret as expressive of the meaning of the text read. Chafe (1988)
suggested that to read a sentence with proper intonation, one must assign
syntactic roles to the words in the sentence. The assignment of syntactic
roles is a key component of constructing a coherent interpretation of the
text read.
In much of the newly published research on reading fluency,
attention is given to the reader’s ability to adhere to the author’s syntactic
structure of sentences in text. In the National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP) report entitled Listening to Children Read Aloud, the
76 Reading Research and Instruction, Volume 46, No. 1 * Fall 2006

authors state that “recognizing the author’s syntax can be critical since
identical groups of words may represent various meanings when read with
different syntactical patterns displayed through intonation, stress
placements, or insertions of pauses” (Pinnell et al., 1995, p. 15). This
adherence to the author’s intended syntactic conventions during oral
reading requires the reader to be aware of the ideas that are expressed in
the text. Only through reading with an understanding of syntactic
structures can a reader comprehend the author’s intended purpose (Pinnell
et al., 1995).
These observations are consistent with findings from a relatively
small, but growing number of studies (e.g., Carlisle, 2004; Demont &
Gombert, 1996; Gottardo, Stanovich, & Siegel, 1996; Leikin, 2002;
Lyster, 2002; Mahony, Singson, & Mann, 2000; Nation & Snowling,
2004; Nation, Clarke, Marshall, & Durand, 2004; Stothard & Hulme,
1992; Yuill & Oakhill, 1991), which have shown that children’s ability to
read is greatly influenced by their degree of sensitivity to broader
language processes including word formation (Morphological Awareness),
sentence structure (Syntactic or Grammatical Awareness), and discourse
structure (Textual Awareness). These researchers concur that readers
identify certain words by their morphological and syntactic structures;
they learn that events that have already occurred are marked by
morphological inflections such as ‘ed’; and are able to determine that
sentences are formed using a certain word order. While it is unclear how
readers actually use knowledge of morphology and syntax when
constructing meaning, the structure of words and sentences provides a
grammatical foundation for linking forms and meanings in a systematic
way.
The relatively small research base investigating the influence of
syntactic or grammatical awareness on children’s ability to read has shown
that the ability to identify and manipulate the syntactic structure of spoken
language is generally related to reading development. Examples of
findings relating syntax to reading include children’s difficulty in
detecting and correcting syntactic errors (e.g., Bentin, Deutsch, &
Liberman, 1990; Demont & Gombert, 1996; Gottardo, Stanovich, &
Siegel, 1996; Leikin, 2002), preschool children who later develop reading
problems showing a more limited array of syntax in their speech than
control children (Nation & Snowling, 2000, 2004), using first graders’
syntactic awareness skills as a predictor of second grade word recognition,
even when controlling for the effects of phonological awareness and
 How Problems of Reading Fuency and Comprehension are Related to Difficulties… 77

general ability (Tunmer, 1989), students using less complex syntactic

structures when writing, and their speech is marked with a greater number
of grammatical errors than good readers (Scott, 2004), and differences in
sentence processing between normal and dyslexic readers, suggesting the
existence of a syntactic processing weakness for readers with dyslexia
(Leikin, 2002).
The findings of these studies and others highlight the important
role syntax plays in reading development and provide documented
evidence that that poor comprehenders appear to have language processing
difficulties encompassing awareness of the syntactic or grammatical
structure of the language, although their decoding skills are often
adequate. Many of these language-processing weaknesses have typically
been associated with word decoding, sentence or text comprehension. The
role of syntax has recently been highlighted in two major research
handbooks edited by reputable researchers in this area including Berman
(2004) and Stone, Silliman, Ehren, & Apel (2004).
In the present study, we seek to contribute to this important line of
research by examining the role of syntactic awareness not just on reading
comprehension, but also on reading fluency and its relation to syntactic
awareness among a group of struggling 5th grade students. While reading
fluency is a critically important aspect of reading development (Walker,
Mokhtari, Sargent, 2006), it has not been carefully examined with all its
components (i.e., accuracy, rate, and prosody) in relation to broader
language-processing skills such as syntax. We concur with Nation &
Snowling (2000) that:
Since fluent reading requires that the meanings of single
words be integrated at the sentence and text levels and that
ongoing comprehension be monitored, sensitivity to the
syntactic and semantic constraints of the language might be
viewed as a resource that ‘bootstraps’ literacy development.
(Walker, Mokharti, & Sargent, 2006).

Aims of the present study

In this study, we examined the role of syntactic awareness
(children’s awareness of the syntactic structure of sentences and their
ability to reflect on and manipulate that structure) as a potential source of
reading difficulty among 5th grade readers. We were interested in finding
out (1) whether students’ levels of syntactic awareness were significantly
associated with their ability to read fluently, and (2) whether low levels of
syntactic awareness could be associated with difficulties in reading
78 Reading Research and Instruction, Volume 46, No. 1 * Fall 2006

comprehension performance. Encouraged by the findings from prior

research on the importance of syntactic awareness in reading ability, we
predicted that higher levels of syntactic awareness would correspond to
higher levels of reading fluency and comprehension among fifth-grade
readers. Conversely, we anticipated that lower levels of syntactic
awareness would correspond to poor reading fluency and comprehension
performance.

Method

Participants
The participants in this study consisted of thirty-two (n=32) fifth-
grade students enrolled in a suburban neighborhood school in the south
central United States. The average age of the students was approximately
eleven and one half years. As Table 1 indicates, twenty (63%) of the
participants were of Caucasian decent, two (6%) were African-American,
three (9%) were Hispanic-American, and seven (22%) were American
Indian. All students were born in the United States and speak English as
their primary language at home, and represented a variety of socio-
economic backgrounds ranging from upper-middle to lower middle class,
with the majority being from working class families.

Table 1
Description of Participants by Age, Gender, and Ethnicity
Number Percent
Age
Mean 11.32
SD .64
Gender
Male 17 53.1
Female 15 46.9
Total 32 100
Ethnicity
Caucasian 20 62.5
Am. Indian 7 21.9
African Am. 2 6.3
Hispanic 3 9.4
Total 32 100
 How Problems of Reading Fuency and Comprehension are Related to Difficulties… 79

School records indicated that these students exhibited a wide range

of abilities with respect to reading achievement as measured by
standardized reading tests and state-mandated criterion-referenced tests.
Records further showed that of the total number of students, seven
received daily Title I assistance in reading led by the second author (BT),
who was the Title I teacher at the time of the study. In addition, three of
the students qualified for Special Education services in the area of reading
because of an identified learning disability and one received supplemental
instruction in the school’s Gifted and Talented program. No students
received special education services in the areas of speech and language
development.
The 32 students were enrolled in a fifth-grade self-contained
classroom in a small neighborhood school with a total school enrollment
of approximately 308 students in grades one through six. This classroom
was selected for participation in the study as several of the students were
suspected, by their teacher, of having language-related problems, which
may explain some of the problems they were having in reading and
writing. The curriculum materials used in the target classroom consisted of
the Harcourt Reading Basal Trophies Series (2002), which feature an
integrated Language Arts program incorporating reading, vocabulary,
grammar, spelling, and writing based on state standards.

Data Collection: Materials and Procedures

All 32 students completed a set of assessment measures aimed at
determining levels of syntactic awareness in relation to their oral reading
fluency and comprehension performance. Over a period of approximately
four weeks, each student completed two standardized reading achievement
tests (one norm-referenced, the other criterion-referenced), a reading
fluency assessment battery, including an assessment of reading rate,
decoding accuracy, and prosody or expression, and a test of syntactic
awareness. A brief description of each of these measures follows.
Test of Language Development- Intermediate [TOLD-II: 3]
(Hammill & Newcomer, 1996). We used the TOLD-II: 3 test to assess the
students’ understanding and use of different aspects of grammatical or
syntactic ability. Although the test battery consists of six subtests, only
three of the subtests (namely Sentence Combining, Word Ordering, and
Grammatical Competence) were designated for the assessment of syntactic
awareness. The result of the three subtests yielded a Syntax Quotient
(SyQ) which we used to determine the subject’s syntactical knowledge or
abilities. The TOLD-II: 3 is considered to be a valid and reliable test of
80 Reading Research and Instruction, Volume 46, No. 1 * Fall 2006

language ability assessment. Coefficients for all subtests exceed .84, and
all composites are .90 or greater. We used the Syntax Quotient as a unit of
analysis representing students’ levels of syntactic awareness.
NAEP’S Integrated Reading Performance Record [IRPR] (Pinnell
et al., 1995). IRPR is designed to measure three interrelated reading
fluency components: Word reading accuracy, reading rate, and prosodic
performance or expression. These components are measured by listening
to the students reading and responding to a grade-appropriate passage
aloud. Decoding accuracy was measured by listening to students reading
aloud, via a miscue analysis, while reading rate consisted of timing the
reading, which was converted into a word per minute (WPM) rate. We
assessed prosodic performance by using the NAEP fluency scale This
scale is considered one of the most appropriate oral reading analysis
procedures for the assessment of prosodic reading ability (Pinnell et al.,
1995).
We conducted the oral reading fluency assessments individually.
Following NAEP guidelines, we asked each student to read a fifth grade-
level passage silently. This reading was followed by a response to three
comprehension questions designed to familiarize the students with the
contents of the passage before they were asked to read it aloud. Finally,
we asked the students to read the passage aloud. The students’ oral reading
performance was tape-recorded for analysis by two (in a few cases three
judges) using the NAEP Oral Reading Fluency Scale. We compared the
judges’ ratings for agreement (96%), and we discussed the emerging
discrepancies until we reached consensus. This process resulted in reading
fluency ratings ranging from 4 (Fluent) to 1 (Non-Fluent), which was
ultimately used as a unit of analysis for students’ reading fluency
performance.
The Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test (MacGinitie & McGinite,
1989). The Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test is a general reading test
consisting of two subtests: vocabulary and comprehension. The Gates test
is a standardized reading test, which was regularly administered to all
students in the school. It is a commonly used measure of reading
comprehension and vocabulary with adequate technical adequacy as
indicated by the test’s reported reliability and validity data with reliability
coefficients ranging from .90-.95 for vocabulary and .88-.94 for
comprehension. We used the Normal Curve Equivalent (NCE) scores as
units of analysis representing reading comprehension performance on a
norm-referenced reading test.
 How Problems of Reading Fuency and Comprehension are Related to Difficulties… 81

Oklahoma Criterion-Referenced Reading Test (Oklahoma

Department of Education, 2002). This state-mandated test is used to
measure students’ reading achievement based on pre-established state
curriculum standards. The test has adequate psychometric properties
(reliability coefficients ranging from .90 to .94) and is considered a
reliable and valid test of reading achievement for Oklahoma students. We
used the Normal Curve Equivalent (NCE) scores as units of analysis
representing reading comprehension performance on a criterion-referenced
reading test.

Data Analyses
We analyzed the data obtained by using basic descriptive statistics,
which provided a description of the subjects in terms of demographics
including age, gender, and ethnicity. We used correlation analyses to
determine whether students’ levels of syntactic awareness were related to
their reading fluency and comprehension performance.

Results

Table 2 presents descriptive statistics pertaining to the subjects’

performance in syntactic awareness, reading fluency (decoding accuracy,
reading rate, prosody) and comprehension (vocabulary knowledge, text
comprehension). As the data in Table 2 show, there was a fair amount of
variability in performance in each of the main dependent variables as
indicated by the standard deviations and range statistics. School records
depicting student performance on criterion-referenced assessments in
reading indicate that this group of students appears to be quite
characteristic of most fifth grade students in terms of demographics,
reading ability levels, and overall educational achievement.
82 Reading Research and Instruction, Volume 46, No. 1 * Fall 2006

Table 2
Means and Standard Deviations for Student performance (N= 32) on
Syntactic Awareness, Reading Fluency, & Reading Comprehension
Mean (SD) Min Max Range
1
Syntactic Awareness 94.06 (12.32) 72 124 52
Reading Fluency2
Decoding Accuracy 94.28 (4.25) 86 99 13
Reading Rate 106.47 (28.53) 55 163 108
Prosody 2.641 (0.84) 1 4 3
Reading Comprehension (Gates3)
Vocabulary 53.50 (18.41) 15 99 84
Comprehension 50.78 (16.05) 25 99 74
Composite 52.50 (17.30) 22 99 72

Reading Comprehension 731.44 (54.04) 647 830 183

(CRT4)
1. Syntactic Awareness scores reflects students’ Syntactic Quotient, which consists of
performance on three of the TOLD subtests (namely Sentence Combining, Word
Ordering, and Grammatical Competence) yielding standard scores ranging from 0-
100.
2. Reading Fluency scores are based on decoding accuracy (Percent of words read
correctly), reading rate (Words correct per minute), and prosodic performance
(Scale from 4 [Fluent] to 1 [Non-Fluent])
3. Reading Comprehension performance on the Gates-MacGinite test is based on
Normal Curve Equivalent (NCE) Scores.
4. Reading Comprehension performance on the Oklahoma CRT reading test is based on
Normal Curve Equivalent (NCE) Scores.

Table 3 presents results pertaining to whether students’ syntactic or

grammatical awareness is significantly related to reading fluency (reading
rate, decoding accuracy, prosodic performance) and reading
comprehension. The results revealed a statistically significant correlation
between students’ syntactic awareness and each of the three components
of reading fluency, including reading rate (r=.50; p< .01), decoding
accuracy (r=.51; p< .01), and prosodic performance (r=.62; p< .01). We
found a similar pattern of relationships with respect to performance on two
reading comprehension measures—one norm-referenced (Gates-
MacGinite), the other criterion-referenced (Oklahoma Criterion-Reference
Reading Test). Specifically, we found a significant relationship between
 How Problems of Reading Fuency and Comprehension are Related to Difficulties… 83

students’ syntactic awareness and their reading comprehension

performance as measured by the Gates MacGinitie reading test (r=.816; p
< .01) and the state’s criterion referenced reading test (r=.700; p < .01).

Table 3
Correlations among Syntactic Awareness, Reading Fluency
and Comprehension
Syntactic Reading Reading Decoding
Gates Awareness Fluency Rate Accuracy CRT-
Reading
Comprehension
(Gates)
Syntactic
.816**
Awareness
Oral Reading
.727** .625**
Fluency

Reading Rate .568** .500** .877**

Decoding
.453** .516** .590** .480**
Accuracy
Reading
Comprehension .887** .700** .723** .611** .431*
(CRT)
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed)

The relationships among students’ syntactic awareness and performance

on reading fluency and comprehension were also graphically depicted in
Figures 1-3 for reading fluency and in Figures 4-5 for reading
comprehension performance, respectively. We generated these charts by
categorizing the syntactic awareness performance data into four percentile
range groups. Thus, the first group (n= 7) represents subject cases that fell
below the 25th percentile, the second group (n= 9) represents cases falling
between the 25th and 50th percentile, the third group (n= 9) represents
cases between the 50th and 75th percentile, and the fourth group (n=7)
represents cases at or above the 75th percentile. These figures seem to
84 Reading Research and Instruction, Volume 46, No. 1 * Fall 2006

indicate that, as predicted, students’ higher levels of syntactic awareness

corresponded to higher levels of reading fluency among the fifth graders
in this study. Conversely, lower levels of syntactic awareness
corresponded to poorer performance in reading fluency among these
students. The data shown in Figures 4 and 5 seem to indicate that lower
levels of syntactic awareness correspond to relatively poor reading
comprehension performance among the fifth graders in this study.
Conversely, students’ higher levels of syntactic awareness corresponded to
higher levels of reading comprehension among the fifth graders in this
study. These findings are noteworthy in light of the recent advances in
reading research, particularly those related to reading fluency and
comprehension.

Figure 1: Relationship between syntactic awareness and reading rate

 How Problems of Reading Fuency and Comprehension are Related to Difficulties… 85

Figure 2: Relationship between syntactic awareness and decoding

accuracy

Figure 3: Relationship between syntactic awareness and oral reading

fluency
86 Reading Research and Instruction, Volume 46, No. 1 * Fall 2006

Figure 4: Relationship between syntactic awareness and reading

comprehension as measured by the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test

Figure 5: Relationship between syntactic awareness and reading

comprehension as measured by a criterion-referenced reading test
 How Problems of Reading Fuency and Comprehension are Related to Difficulties… 87

Discussion

In this study, we assessed and analyzed thirty-two 5th grade

students’ levels of syntactic awareness in relation to their reading
comprehension, and to their reading fluency (i.e., decoding accuracy,
reading rate, prosody), an aspect of reading whose relevance in relation to
both reading comprehension and syntactic skills have not been well
documented in prior research. The aim was to examine the role of
syntactic awareness as a potential source of reading fluency and
comprehension difficulty for these readers. We found that the students’
levels of syntactic awareness were significantly related to their reading
fluency (r= .625) and reading comprehension performance (r= .816). As
predicted, we found that students who showed deficits in syntactic
awareness performed poorly on measures of reading comprehension and
reading fluency. Conversely, we found that higher levels of syntactic
awareness corresponded to higher levels of comprehension performance
among these students.
These findings support the view that poor comprehenders appear to
have language processing difficulties encompassing awareness of the
syntactic or grammatical structure of the language. They indicate to us that
students’ syntactic awareness skills are closely related to their reading
skills. As such, they are at odds with some prior research work, which has
suggested that poor syntactic awareness may be a by-product of poor
phonemic awareness skills (e.g., Smith, Macaruso, Shankweiler, & Crain,
1989). On the other hand, they provide support for more recent research
work, which has shown that students’ poor syntactic awareness skills may
not be sufficiently explained by phonemic weaknesses alone and that they
must be looked at in relation to broader language skills such as syntax
(e.g., Nation & Snowling, 2000, 2004; Scott, 2004, Cain & Oakhill, 2004).
In fact, the importance and relevance of syntactic awareness and its
relation to reading fluency and comprehension may have been obscured by
an over-emphasis on decoding and phonemic awareness skills weaknesses.
For example, Nation & Snowling (2000, 2004) and Stothard & Hulme
(1992) have shown that children with comprehension problems have weak
syntactic awareness skills, suggesting that “poor comprehenders’
difficulties extend beyond problems with reading comprehension to more
general weaknesses with language processing” (Nation & Snowling, 2000,
p. 236). Consistent with these findings, other researchers (e.g., Bentin,
Deutsch, & Liberman, 1990; Demont & Gombert, 1996; Gaux &
Gombert, 1999), have shown that children’s ability to detect and correct
88 Reading Research and Instruction, Volume 46, No. 1 * Fall 2006

syntactic errors is directly related to reading comprehension, and that poor

comprehenders had more difficulty with explicit syntactic knowledge,
such as word order, than did good comprehenders. These findings are also
consistent with prior theorizing regarding children’s syntactic
development, which presumably occurs throughout the preschool and
elementary school years. Menyuk (1999), for example, suggests that
children follow a set of predictable developmental phases to acquire
abilities to comprehend and produce language structures, judge the
correctness of structures, and make corrections in their own language
productions. Indeed, the development of syntactic control continues well
into, and possibly through the upper elementary grades and is thought to
follow a well-determined developmental sequence (see Ruddell &
Ruddell, 1994). Fillmore and Snow (2000) noted that language is a vital
developmental area throughout the years of schooling, irrespective of
children’s linguistic, cultural, or social background. They argue that:
All children have a long way to go developmentally before
they can be regarded as mature members of their speech
communities. As they progress through the grades, children
will acquire the grammatical structures, forms, and
strategies for the more sophisticated and precise ways of
using language that are associated with maturity and being
educated.” (p. 7).
The findings of this study have relevance for reading teachers and
researchers. They have important implications for research and instruction
addressing the potential contribution of broader language skills, such as
syntax, to the development of reading fluency and comprehension. First,
we suggest expanding the research base on the importance and relevance
of syntax and its relation to the development of students’ reading fluency
and comprehension skills. We encourage research work involving in-depth
analyses of single case studies as well as larger data sets of students
varying in syntactic ability levels to determine the relative contribution of
syntactic awareness skills to both reading fluency and reading
comprehension. Findings from such investigations can potentially lead to a
better understanding of the role of syntactic skills in developing fluency
and comprehension and perhaps the reasons why some readers fail to learn
to read while others succeed.
Second, we encourage the development of fine-grained measures
for assessing students’ syntactic awareness and related language
processes. These measures can help distinguish between students’
 How Problems of Reading Fuency and Comprehension are Related to Difficulties… 89

syntactic awareness (a metalinguistic skill), and their knowledge of

syntactic structures, which refer to the conscious understanding of
syntactic categories and their functions, and how each contributes to the
development of reading fluency and comprehension. Finally, we
encourage the development of language-based curricula and the design of
effective instruction aimed at determining how the improvement of
syntactic awareness would impact reading fluency and reading
comprehension among students’ varying in reading ability levels and
experiences.

Limitations

While the findings of this study, and others like it, point to an
important connection between syntactic awareness and aspects of reading
ability, they must be interpreted with a great deal of caution. For example,
they must not be construed to imply a causal relationship between
syntactic awareness and reading development for struggling readers such
as the ones used in this study. The relationships depicted Figures 1-5 need
to be interpreted cautiously as well due to the number of high
intercorrelations among the variables used (see Table 3). In other words,
the graphs do not clearly tell us whether there is a direct relation between
syntactic awareness and any given variable by itself. For instance, reading
rate and reading comprehension might be influenced by decoding
accuracy. In addition, the relatively small number of subjects used in this
initial study (n=32) limits the generalizability of the results beyond the
students involved. As we indicated above, we encourage the use of larger
data sets of students to enable in-depth examination of the relative
contributions of syntactic awareness to the determination of reading
fluency and reading comprehension over and above word reading rate and
decoding accuracy.
As researchers, we are fully aware of this constraint and are in the
process of completing a series of individual, small and large group
investigations aimed at systematically studying the nature of this
relationship. Preliminary data from a small pilot study underway have so
far shown that incremental increases syntactic awareness through direct
instruction lead to improved reading fluency and reading comprehension
among struggling fifth grade students. These findings, which are
consistent with prior research work in support of a causal link between
reading comprehension and syntactic awareness (see especially Gaux &
Gombert, 1999; Demont & Gombert, 1996; Tunmer, 1989), seem to point
90 Reading Research and Instruction, Volume 46, No. 1 * Fall 2006

to a possible causal link between children's underlying syntactic awareness

and success in reading fluently and with adequate comprehension.
Clearly, much more research work is needed to determine the
nature of such an important causal relationship between syntactic skills
and reading. The idea is that if children, given intensive instruction in
syntactic awareness, make major gains in reading fluency and
comprehension, then such metalinguistic processing as a cause of reading
difficulty could be given credibility. The improvement of syntactic
awareness, a metalinguistic skill, remains largely untested and we urge
researchers to continue the search for more direct links between language
and reading components, and to consider developing instructional
paradigms that build on such research. Findings from several of such
studies can be quite significant not only to our understanding of the role of
metalinguistic awareness skills in developing students’ reading fluency
and comprehension, but also to the development of adequate measures for
assessing such language-based processes, and devising effective teaching
strategies for enhancing students’ reading fluency and comprehension.
 How Problems of Reading Fuency and Comprehension are Related to Difficulties… 91

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