Differences in Reading Strategies Employed by Students Constructing Graphic Organizers and Students Producing Summaries in EFL Reading

The big difference between summaries and graphic organizers (GOs) as adjunct aids for EFL reading is that GOs can reduce the cognitive burden on readers because of their two-dimensional spatial displays while summaries cannot. In this study, five Japanese high school students were required to construct GOs and another five were required to produce summaries while reading a passage written in English. They were required to report what they were thinking while reading the passage and producing adjunct aids so that their use of reading strategies could be examined. The results gained from think-aloud protocol analysis indicated that the GO group reported more general comprehension strategies than the summary group. The findings are discussed from the perspective that the task of constructing the GOs using visual argument allowed the students to employ more general comprehension strategies. 学習者の英文読解を補助するために、要約を書かせる方法と英文の構成を図式化させる方法（Graphic Organizer；GO）がある。両者の最も大きな違いはGOの場合、二次元の空間配置を利用することによって読み手の認知的負荷を軽減できることにある。本研究では５名の被験者に構成図を、５名の被験者に要約を書かせる課題を与え、使用される読解方略の違いをプロトコル分析によって検討した。分散分析の結果、構成図を書いた群は、要約を書いた群よりも、テキスト全体の構成に関わる読解方略を多く使用し、言語的な情報に関わる読解方略を少なくすることが示された。図式化した読者は情報を視覚化することにより、より包括的な読解方略を使ったためであろうという解釈がなされた。