The association between oral language comprehension skills of vocabulary, semantics, morphology, syntax and paragraph with reading comprehension

The ability to understand what is read vastly enables and increases children's learning.

The 'Simple View of Reading' proposed that both reading accuracy and oral language comprehension are required for adequate reading comprehension, and subsequent research has supported this.

This thesis focusses on the oral language skills associated with reading comprehension.

A systematic literature review was conducted to examine the relationship between aspects of oral language, such as, vocabulary, semantics, morphology, syntax and paragraph comprehension and reading comprehension.

The review found that there is some evidence that comprehension of semantics, syntax and paragraphs in oral language are associated with reading comprehension in primary aged school children in English speaking countries.

There is inconclusive evidence about the role of vocabulary, and weak evidence to link morphology with reading comprehension. No study had linked all five aspects of language in one study.

The research study reported in the empirical paper extended the findings from the systematic review.

The study aimed to explore how oral language comprehension of vocabulary, semantics, morphology, syntax and paragraphs are associated with reading comprehension.

Participants were 113 Year 2 children (6-7 years), assessed on a range of oral language and reading comprehension measures.

Multiple linear regression analyses were conducted, and results showed that oral language predictor variables accounted for approximately half of the variance on the combined reading comprehension measure.

All oral language predictor variables were significantly associated with reading comprehension, but only morphology and syntax retained significance when all variables were accounted for.

This study postulates that morphology and syntax are important skills for reading comprehension and proposes that further research is conducted to replicate these findings, and to investigate the impact of interventions in morphology and syntax on reading comprehension.