On the Notion of Psychological Reality of Immediate Constituent Structure and Its Implications in Reading Comprehension for Iranian EFL Students

Abstract

This study is an attempt to investigate the effect of physical arrangement of sentences on the basis of constituent structures of text type passages on Iranian EFL students' reading comprehension with regard to language proficiency. For this purpose, three English text type passages each consisting of six passages in one of three forms (a) texts with breaks at major constituent boundaries -Between constituents- (b) texts with breaks at minor constituent boundaries -within constituents- and (c) intact texts; were given to 90 students, who were divided into three groups at the same level of proficiency. A 30-item multiple-choice test was used to assess comprehension. To test the hypotheses posed in the study, the collected data were analyzed by ANOVA (one way) and scheffe test was utilized in post hoc analyses. The results of the study indicated that physical arrangement of sentences has a significant effect on students reading comprehension. So, what this research suggests is that constituents play an important role in students sentence perception and that EFL enterprise can enhance students' information- processing and perception by techniques of constituency-awareness on the part of EFL students.