Metalinguistic Awareness and L2 English Reading Comprehension among Pakistani Undergraduates: The Predictive Roles of Morphological and Syntactic Awareness

Abstract

This study examined the extent to which morphological awareness (MA) and syntactic awareness (SA) predict English reading comprehension among Pakistani Urdu-speaking undergraduates, after controlling for receptive vocabulary. A quantitative, cross-sectional, correlational design was employed. Data were collected from 112 participants through an online test battery delivered via Google Form, consisting of four instruments: a background questionnaire, a 25-item receptive vocabulary test (Vocabulary Levels Test), a 20-item derivational MA task, a 20-item grammaticality judgement task for SA, and a 10-item reading comprehension test. Data analysis involved descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation to examine bivariate relationships, and a two-step hierarchical multiple regression to determine the unique and joint predictive contributions of MA and SA. Results showed that both MA and SA correlated positively with reading comprehension. However, after controlling for vocabulary, SA emerged as the stronger unique predictor (sr² = .065, p = .001), while MA did not reach statistical significance (p = .056) in the full model. The findings suggest that for Urdu-L1 learners, syntactic awareness plays an especially important role in academic reading, possibly due to typological differences between Urdu (SOV) and English (SVO). The study recommends explicit syntax instruction in Pakistani university English programs.