Reading for Comprehension : On the schema and strategies employed by Japanese speakers of English

If children of a young age can understand books with unknown vocabulary in it without the use of a dictionary or parent translator, then we should be able to expect foreign language adults speakers at the college level to perform as well. If children can construe meaning from pictures and words, the symbols of children's literature, then surely these adults could do the same. However, it was found that that was not necessarily the case with all non-native speakers. The Japanese were highly out-performed by the other groups of foreign speakers. The non-Japanese group results were closer to the children's testing results leading to the conclusion that aspects of their reading comprehension was higher than that of the Japanese speakers/learners of English. Why was this the case? A look at the results reveals possible differences in the reading schema and strategies of Japanese users of English in contrast with other non-native English speakers.12KJ00004360012departmental bulletin pape