A study of Reading Comprehension Difficulties of Learners of Japanese

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24520563
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Japanese language education
• Research Institution: Miyagi University of Education
• Principal Investigator: TAKAHASHI AKIKO 宮城教育大学, 国際理解教育研究センタ－, 准教授 (10333767)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 読解 / 困難 / 日本語学習者 / 中級 / 再生課題

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The purpose of this study is to investigate the difficulties of reading comprehension in learners of Japanese. The two goals of this study were follows: (1) Can leaners recall the main idea from the text? (2) What kind of difficulties do they have? Lower-intermediate, intermediate and advanced Learners were assigned to read a text and recall the text by rewriting or by orally it in Japanese. The date was collected and analyzed. The results indicate that learners can recall the most important main idea at the top level of structure of the text and supporting idea at the lower level of structure, but it is not easy for them to judge the importance of a main idea unit connection at second or third structure level. The results also indicate that there were many difficulties which includes word meaning, grammar, expressions, demonstratives, text structure, etc. It was also difficult to form the coherent representation of the text, especially for the lower-intermediate learners.

Free Research Field

日本語教育学