著者

今井 靖親 高本 和昌

出版者

奈良教育大学

雑誌

奈良教育大学紀要. 人文・社会科学 (ISSN:05472393)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.40, no.1, pp.245-262, 1991-11-25

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The purpose of this study was to examine the readability of Japanese sentences. Experiment I was conducted in order to test the effect of the percentage of Chinese charcters and the presentation of the theme in the sentences on the subjects' reading time. The subjects were 60 college students. On the basis of the percentage of Chinese characters in the sentences and the presentation of the theme of the sentences, they were randomly assigned to one of the following six groups : High-theme, High-no theme, Middle-no theme, Non-theme, Non-no theme. They were asked to read the sentences shown by a slide projector on a paper and the time to read the sentences was recorded. For the subjects of the 'theme' groups the theme was told before they started reading the sentences. The reading time in the High groups was significantly shorter than that in the 'Non'groups. This suggests that the words written in Chinese characters in the sentences have facilitating effect on the readability of the Japanese sentences. No significant difference was observed between the 'theme' groups and the 'no theme' groups. The result made it clear that there were very similar words like the theme in the sentences shown for the 'no theme' groups. Experiment 2 was designed in order to test again the effect of the presentation of the theme on the subjects' reading time. The subjects were 20 college students. They were asked to read the sentences written only in hiragana (not containing Chinese charcters) on a paper. The 'theme' group took more reading time that in the 'no theme' group, but in reading the sentences the subjects of the 'theme' group made fewer mistakes than the subjects of the 'no theme' group. The findings suggest that the theme presented for the subjects facilitated to recognize the words in the sentences. but it took more time for them to correspond the contents or the words of the sentences with the theme.