Abstract:
This paper explores whether vocabulary knowledge, syntactic awareness and metacognitive awareness
reading strategies are strong predictors of reading comprehension. It also addresses the relationship
among vocabulary knowledge, syntactic awareness, metacognitive awareness reading strategies and
reading comprehension achievement. To attain this objective, descriptive research using a correlational
research design was employed. 100 participants were selected.from a population of 250 11th Grade Jiga
Preparatory School students using simple random sampling. The participants were asked to respond to a
MARSQ developed by Taraban, Kerr and Ryneason (2004) and researcher-made tests of vocabulary
knowledge, syntactic awareness and reading comprehension. Pearson product moment correlation and
stepwise multiple regression analysis were used in data analysis. The results of the correlation analysis
showed that among the three predictor variables namely, EFL learners' vocabulary knowledge, syntactic
awareness and metacognitive awareness reading strategies, vocabulary knowledge is highly correlated
with reading comprehension; there is strong positive correlation between vocabulary knowledge and
syntactic awareness; the same high correlation holds for the relationship between syntactic awareness
and reading comprehension, but there were no significant correlation with metacof.5nitive awareness
reading strategies. The stepwise multiple regression analysis results also revealed that EFL students'
vocabulary knowledge plays a significant role in predicting their reading comprehension achievement
compared to syntactic awareness and metacognitive awareness reading strategies. Finally, some useful
implications and recommendations which are of significance to educators, teachers and researchers are
proposed based on the research findings. Accordingly, the result contends that instructions on developing
reading comprehension should put vocabulary knowledge competencies in priority and then focus on
activation of background knowledge and use of reading strategies together with the development of
syntactic awareness for the success of reading comprehension. As EFL vocabulary knowledge was found
to be the strongest significant predictors of reading comprehension, teachers and parents should also pay
special attention to students' vocabulary knowledge
