著者

卯城 祐司 アダチ 徹子 高梨 庸雄

出版者

大修館書店

雑誌

英語教育 (ISSN:09133917)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.48, no.10, pp.28-29, 1999-11

著者

卯城 祐司 森 好紳 細田 雅也 田中 菜採 ダウズ エレノア 多田 豪 中川 弘明

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

アレレ (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.27, pp.81-96, 2016

---

This study examined whether and how Japanese EFL readers maintain coherent narrative comprehension in their memory representations. If readers can successfully maintain coherence in their text comprehension despite encountering coherence breaks, their text memory is enhanced, but if they fail, their text memory can suffer (Otero & Kintsch, 1992). In this study, 48 Japanese EFL university students read 8 experimental narratives and performed a recall task. In each narrative, a character performed an action (e.g., "Mary ordered a cheeseburger") that was either consistent or inconsistent with a prior description of him or her (e.g., "Mary loved junk food" or "Mary was a vegetarian"). The results showed that participants recalled more descriptions and actions of the characters in the inconsistent texts than in the consistent texts, indicating that they selectively reprocessed the inconsistent information in order to maintain coherence. Moreover, most readers chose to edit the later character actions, rather than the preceding descriptions, by substituting the inconsistent actions with more neutral actions (e.g., "Mary ordered food"). These findings suggest that L2 readers slightly edited subsequent information in order to maintain coherence. Pedagogical implications are argued in terms of developing autonomous readers who can self-monitor coherence in their text comprehension.

著者

卯城 祐司 土方 裕子 清水 真紀 院南 洋 笠原 究 下田 彰子 溝下 肇 佐藤 臨太郎

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.16, pp.71-80, 2005-03

---

A translation test is one of the most common reading test methods in Japan, although its reliability and validity have been quite controversial. This study investigated the reliability and validity of translation tests as a measure of reading comprehension in Japanese university entrance examinations, with a particular focus on two research questions: (a) In terms of reliability, what types of translation materials cause difference in rating severity? (b) In terms of validity, what types of sentence can make great differences between translation and comprehension tasks? In order to examine the first research question, four experienced teachers scored English-to-Japanese translations made by 102 university students. Results showed that rating divergence is attributable to raters' different points of scoring (holistic vs. partial), and raters' leniency for inappropriate Japanese expressions or careless mistakes. The second research question was examined by administering 18 sets of translation and reading comprehension tasks to the same participants as above. Results showed that 4 out of 18 English sentences used in Japanese university entrance examinations were considered to be inappropriate as materials for translation tasks when examinees' reading comprehension was intended to be measured.

著者

卯城 祐司 土方 裕子 清水 真紀 中川 知佳子 古賀 功 大野 真澄 梅原 愛

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.18, pp.31-40, 2007-03

---

A recall test is useful in that the test score is not affected by question items; however, this test is frequently criticized as being simply a memory test that does not measure pure reading comprehension. Although retrieval cues are sometimes provided to readers in order to decrease the effects of the memory load, it is unclear how these cues are related to the ideas recalled. The aim of this study is to examine what types of retrieval cues can promote recall performance of Japanese EFL learners. In Experiment 1, we investigated the relationship between learners' L2 reading proficiency and the importance level of recalled ideas. In Experiment 2, we examined the effects of cue types on recall tests. In addition, the results of three types of recall tests - free recall, recall with main cues, and recall with detailed cues - were compared in order to elucidate the validity of cued recall tests. The results showed that retrieval cues did not promote recall performance. Moreover, we found that cued recall tests had lower correlations with L2 reading proficiency scores than free recall tests, which indicates that retrieval cues reduced the concurrent validity.

著者

卯城 祐司 甲斐 あかり 中川 知佳子 渡邊 芙裕美 星野 由子 清水 遥

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.20, pp.11-20, 2009-03

---

The effects of reading perspective on summarization have not been investigated in previous studies even though many researchers have confirmed its influence on reading processes and comprehension. Through two experiments, the present study examined how EFL learners' perspective in reading affects their summary writing processes, including importance rating and application of macrorules. Experiment 1 showed that reading perspective influenced the reader's evaluation of information importance, whereas it had no significant effect on the selection of information to be included in summaries - a result which might have been caused by the lenient restriction on summary length. Hence, in Experiment 2, the effects of reading perspective were re-examined with a shorter summary task. Contrary to Experiment 1, the results revealed the significant influence of reading perspective on the selection of information as well as on the application of two other macrorules: generalization and construction. These findings suggest the importance of providing reading perspective in summary writing as well as the possibility that summary length influences the application of macrorules.

著者

卯城 祐司 中川 知佳子 森本 由子 土方 裕子 渡邊 芙裕美 甲斐 あかり

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.19, pp.201-210, 2008-03

---

There has been much research conducted to compare open-ended and multiple-choice tests from the viewpoints of construct and difficulty. However, almost no studies have examined the effects of question types in relation to test formats. Through two experiments, this study investigated how question types influence the difficulty of these two test formats. The results of Experiment 1 showed that question types affected item difficulty in open-ended tests; more specifically, thematic questions were the most difficult, followed by inference questions, and paraphrase questions were the easiest. In contrast, the result of Experiment 2, in which the same tests were conducted in the multiple-choice test format, revealed that item difficulty did not differ significantly by question type. In addition, we found that predictability of the results of the multiple-choice test was low compared to the open-ended test. Comparison of these two experiments suggested the importance of choice in the multiple-choice test. Close examination of choices indicated that overlap of words in correct choices and the text influenced the item difficulty.