Chunking and English Reading Comprehension by Japanese High School EFL Learners

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(1)C㎞㎜mki血g amd瓦mgIish ReadiIlg Comprehemsiom by J叩amese High S曲。oH1：FL Lear皿。rs. 教科・領域教育学専攻. 言書吾系コース. M08136D 梶昌彦. The present study has two pu11〕oses，One is to. 111ade 丘。m the standpoint of accuracy and 1ength of a. investigate the reIationship be（〃een Japanese high. chunk．As向r accuracy，it has been studied through the. school students’ chunking ability and their readillg. method of askmg students to separate sentences on a. comprehension in English，The other is to suggest an. sheet with slash（e．g．RasiIIski，1989）l. e施。tive method ofteaching reading based on the survey. Chapter2presents the resu1ts of the survey on. and two experiments which I conducted的r this research−. s血dents’read言ng metacognition．The results showed危ur. Chapter l reviews the previous studies on chunking−. sig瓦ificant d冊erences between the students with high. Chunki㎎is㎝e of the tec㎞iques危r reading English. reading ability and the students with1ow readimg abiIity．. sentences in the order ofwords presented．This method is. Two of the significant di脆rences suggested that the. cons｛dered to be e箭ective肪r Japanese leamers of. lower leve1students did not have so much㎞owledge. English whose mother tongue has di脆rent sentence. about prepositions and conjunctions and also did not pay. stmctures−A chunk is generally㎞own as a unit of. 舳ention to曲em so much w11ile read㎞g sentences．In. meaning．There are some ch㎜king me止hods in Japan，. short，the lower Ieve1students，in comparison to the. but each has a di脆rent concept ofa unit ofmean｛ng，and. higher level stud㎝ts，had less㎞owledge and a耐enti㎝. consequent1y proposes di脆rent ways of chunking，. to the肋ncti011words．Since血nction words have clues. Tanaka Shigenori （1993） made several impo血mt. fbr syntactic processing（Tenma，1989），awareness of. statements on the de冊1itioll of a chuηk．He pointed out. these words contributes to the improvement of their. that when we th㎞about chunks，we need two no㎜s．. readimg abiIities．The other two sign術。ant di茄erences. ○皿e noml is liエ■guistic units，and the other is idiomaticity．. suggested that the lower level studellts did not guess the. Not every ch口nk can be a processing㎜it in read㎞g．. meanillg of the u越㎝own words by checking the. There is a general agreement among researchers that a. meanings ofthe p㎞ases and cIauses which were around. prOcessing unit in readi皿g is based on its syntactic. the un1㎞own words and a−so did not try to understand the. structure and thus it｛s a phrase or a unit bigger than a. mean㎞goftheun㎞ownwordsbyguもssi㎎thefomsof. chunk （e．g．Kadota，1999）． To sum up，we can. the words．The lower level s血dents are characterized by. condude that the1ength of a processing unit i血reading is. poor awareness of血nction words，1㎞ited vocabulaW，. Hexib1e，Referring to this曲。t，Kadota（2001）suggests. and a lack of㎞owledge that words with the same stem. that readers usua11y divide sentences into chunks main−y. have close m閉nings．. by the unit of meaning prior to the syntactic process㎞g，. Chapter3 examines the relationship between. h previous studies，measurement ofchmking abi1ity is. readimg abi1ity and chunking．In the experhnent，I asked. 272.

(2) the students to put slashes in sentences to show how they. the吐出ster speed of processing．（2）There was a stro皿g. read sentences in their minds㎝d make㎜lits ofmean㎞g．. correlati㎝be1ween the l㎝gth ofa ch㎜k（the㎜mber of. I analyzed the chunking they made md found t11e. syllables）and its plIocessing speed，i．e．，O．83 is｛br level. features of the dif庵rent levels of students in readi11g. A students and O．85is施r level B students．This means. abiIity． The average number of the slashes was. that longer the chmks require students longer time to. inversely propo打ional to their 1．eadi11g abi］ity，though. process the units．（3）There was a poor correlation（O．23）. there were some individual variations in each group．. between the length of chunks and their relative speed of. That is，the group of students who had higher reading. processing for B1evel students comp町ed to leve−A. abi1ities had more words in a chunk．Exclud㎞g the. students．Since the figul．e O−23shows a poor correlatioI1，. slashes that were made by natura−pauses，I compared the. it may be necessary to look危r the reason ofthe result−. places that the stude11ts put slashes in．The result showed. Chapter5proposes a practica1teaching method to. illc1usive relations among the three1eveIs oftheir reading. improve reading abi1ity based on the results ofthe survey. abi”収：A⊂B⊂C except one paれ．I analyzed tbe. and two experiments I conducted．This method is geared. locations in which more than40％of level．B students. towards the痂ai㎜ent of three goals：（1）To1et the. put slashes1n the sentences．From the result of the. students understand conjunctions conscious1y（2）To Iet. ana1ysis，three characteristics of chunking on leve1 B. the students understand the usage of verbs alld verb. students were iden術ed、（1）The吐㎞owledge for the. phrases we11（3）To let the students understand that. fOnctions of verbs and verb phrases is not as good as the. additional in的mation comes aier the noun repeatedly．. awareness of leve1A students一（2）Their㎞owledge to. In order to conduct the method e脆。tively，a3−step. capture additionaI infbrmation aier the noun is not as. process is proposed−Using the Chullking Map Handout，. good as the㎞owledge ofthe level A students．（3）They. students can leam the grammatica1aspects of each. use more Working MemoW to execute syntactic. sentence in the a111icle．The tra㎞ing using Backward. processingthanlevelAs血dentsandthuscaIlmtuse. Build up （Rivers， 1978） can encourage students to. enough Working MemoW危r“retenti㎝．”. u11derstand appropriate chu皿king． The Chunking. Chapter4 exami11es the relationship be帥een. C1assification Soiware Program I designed wi11 aHow. reading ability and processing speed of a chunk， In the. students to make a chunk㎞g map simi1竈r to the. experiment I conducted危r this p㎜1〕ose，I employed a. Chunking Handout−Through these practica1activities，. computer so丘ware program that1created to measure the. students are expected to understand chunking and use it. speed of processing a unit of chunk in reading． The. to improve the汁reading skms e脆。tively．. students read an ar＝icle slashed in advance by the researcher．They read the art｛c1e on the computer screen．. The resuIts showed the危uowing：（1）There was a moderate negative co耐elation （一〇．67）between t11e read㎞g comprehension ability and the processing speed．. 主任指導教員山岡俊比古. Altho11gh it cπmot be stated categorica11y that all. 指導教員山岡俊比古. students with high proficiency in read㎞g abi1町have high speed ofprocessing，it can be generaHy cIaimedthat higher−evel of proicieIlcy in readiエ■g is associated with. 273.

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