A Corpus-based Evaluation of Syntactic Complexity Measures as Indices of Advanced English Text Comprehension (Research Paper)

Reading comprehension is a vital skill for language learners, enabling text understanding and academic success. Despite technological progress, written text has remained key to learning, especially in higher education, fostering knowledge acquisition and new ways of thinking. Many studies have explored reader-related challenges affecting comprehension; however, there is a need to cast a careful light on text-related factors as well. To address this, the current study examined syntactic complexity across four corpora of advanced academic reading texts to highlight the need for greater syntactic alignment in teaching and testing materials. By analyzing ۱۰۰ texts from the Vision series textbooks, Iranian M.A. TEFL entrance exams, Cambridge IELTS reading tests, and discussion sections of research papers, the study addressed and reviewed the linguistic challenges EFL learners face in comprehending advanced academic texts. While differing in purpose, these texts share a relatively advanced complexity level. Typically, strong M.A. reading exam performance aligns with IELTS reading proficiency, which is often seen as readiness for research papers. Similarly, Vision coursebooks, the most advanced in Iranian high schools, are expected to exhibit a level of syntactic complexity that, while less dense than research papers, may sufficiently prepare students for university-level reading demands. However, recent research has suggested that such assessments or textbooks, including M.A. entrance exams, may not effectively prepare students for the complexities of real academic contexts. Therefore, using L۲ Syntactic Complexity Analyzer (L۲SCA), the study analyzed the texts, and a MANOVA test confirmed significant differences among the corpora. The findings further revealed that standardized tests and instructional materials often underrepresent the syntactic complexity of authentic academic research, creating a gap between learners' preparedness and real-world academic reading demands. In addition to challenging traditional views on test validity, the results highlighted the need for more representative and comparable syntactic features in instructional and assessment materials.

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Keywords: Advanced Reading Texts ، Corpus ، Corpus-Based ، reading comprehension ، Syntactic complexity ، Text Evaluation