外国語の文章理解に及ぼすパーズィングの影響 <研究論文 : 学習開発学の今>

In this study, I examined how the ability of parsing affects readers’ comprehension of explanatory texts in the context of English as a foreign language (EFL) reading. I randomly assigned 21 Japanese university students into the following two groups: (a) participants who were required to read a text written in English while displayed in appropriately parsed phrases; and (b) participants who were asked to read the exact same text while displayed in inappropriately parsed phrases. Group (a) was considered as the group whose member has a good ability to parse English sentences, while group (b) was considered as the group lacking in parsing ability. The results of two types of comprehension tests, textbase and situation model, conducted with the two groups revealed that group (a) outperformed group (b) in the case of the textbase, and also it is assumed that the situation model can be better constructed by group (a) rather than group (b). These findings suggest that in the context of EFL reading, the ability to parse texts has a great effect on facilitating students’ text comprehension when the readers are at the beginner level.