Abstract:

English as a foreign language is a compulsory subject in Slovak schools, and therefore we consider development of its acquisition to be a key educational goal. An integral language skill for successful learning of the target language is reading comprehension in the given language. However, it is in this area that many Slovak students have problems, even if they successfully cope with the use of language. Our main research goal has been to determine the relationship between the success in syntactic competence of students and their overall success in reading comprehension. In the category of the syntactic competence, we have focused on the syntactic structure of texts, taking into account the criterion of sentence length. A partial goal of the research has been to analyze the answers of students in terms of the range of understanding, i.e. how much meaning students have understood (in short sentences, long sentences, and compound sentences). Another partial goal has been the analysis of the level of understanding, i.e. how the students have understood the linguistic structure of the text (type of text, i.e. whether it is a factual or narrative text, its coherence and cohesion). We have determined these variables using the following research methods: Didactic test of reading comprehension in English and Qualitative content analysis of selected texts and test items within the test. We have worked with a research sample of Slovak upper-secondary school students, mainly from western Slovakia. The results have shown surprising findings. Although students have understood several meanings in the structure of short sentences, student's success in understanding English texts has been related to understanding long sentences with respect to factual and linear text; and in the category of narrative text and linear text, the student's success in understanding English texts has been related to the understanding of short sentences. The findings point to the necessity of innovations in foreign language acquisition

Keywords:

Reading comprehension, text, syntactic competence, success, range of understanding, level of understanding.