Preventing Reading Difficulties in Second Language Learners of English

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25580124
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Foreign language education
• Research Institution: Shinshu University
• Principal Investigator: ARIJI Kenichi 信州大学, 学術研究院総合人間科学系, 准教授 (30432181)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 熟達 / 非熟達 / 記憶容量 / ワーキングメモリ / 第二言語文理解 / 語彙意味処理 / 読解

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The aim of this research is to elucidate the difficulties Japanese second language learners of English have in reading English sentences, and to elaborate on education in improving reading abilities for them.
Through the series of experiments with evaluating working memory span (L1 syntactic working memory(WM); L1 lexical-semantic WM; L2 syntactic WM; L2 lexical-semantic WM), I found an intriguing result in the experiments; the strong correlation between low span of L2 lexical-semantic working memory and the difficulties of reading (i.e., "L2 reading disabilities"). Second language learners with low span of L2 lexical-semantic working memory will face critical difficulties in reading L2 sentences since it is highly probable that such low span can prevent automatic lexical-semantic processing. In the view of the experimental results I observed, consolidating working memory span of L2 lexical-semantic processing by some educational practice must prevent L2 reading disabilities.

Free Research Field

言語心理学　言語教育