Sentence comprehension contains a variety of information and factors, which creates ambiguity and be difficult to process. Few studies have yet investigated how syntactic structure adapts in sentence comprehension with EFL learners, especially not with foreign language learners whose syntactic structure differs significantly from that of English and Japanese, which clearly have a low amount of target language input (Kaan et al., 2019; Arai, 2016).
The purpose of this study was to determine the processing mechanisms of Japanese EFL learners and L1 English speakers in sentence comprehension, and to determine whether repeated exposure of Japanese EFL learners facilitates implicit learning. Participants were exposed to reduced and unreduced relative clause sentences (e.g., The professor [who was] assisted in a difficult experiment enjoyed the task recently.) in the first session, and then randomly exposed to both reduced and unreduced relative clause sentences in session two.
Consequently, the reading time became progressively longer with each experience of reading ambiguous sentences, but the higher percentage of correct responses to content comprehension questions suggests that syntactic processing is taking place. The latency of reading and the high percentage of correct responses from session 1 to session 2 also suggest that implicit learning occurred. Native English speakers also showed progressively longer reading times suggests that the reading time regions in this study were regions where participants had to reanalyze and where processing costs were high, and that implicit learning occurred, and syntactic processing was activated in these regions with each trial, resulting in longer reading times.

Authors:
Mayo Hiura, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Japan
Hirokazu Yokokawa, Kobe University, Japan

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Mayo Hiura is a School Teacher/Instructor at Kyoto Institute of Technology in Japan

See this presentation on the full schedule – Wednesday Schedule

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