Analysis of Non-Kanji Culture Japanese Elementary Proficiency Learners' Reading Process to Create Teaching Materials for Beginners Fostering Reading Comprehension
This study investigates Japanese learners with elementary proficiency and a limited ability to read Japanese and to extract necessary information from a variety of authentic materials written in Japanese along with the comprehension difficulties that arise while reading. The native languages of the twenty participants are not written in Kanji. The results showed that the following are necessary to achieve mastery in reading Japanese.
(i) The organization of background knowledge for each of the authentic materials from the learners' perspectives.
(ii) The clarification of the differences between a typical layout of Japanese materials and that of learners' native languages, what contents are written in which parts, and which part is the most important.
(iii) The presentation of information about characteristic Japanese expressions in each of the materials.
(iv) The selection of important Kanji, words, and phrases that are useful clues for reading and arrangement of the minimum information on the clues relevant to the contexts in which these are used.