Abstract
The purpose of this study was to clarify the effects of the use of adjunct questions on reading comprehension in Japanese. Experimental subjects consisted of 150 students who were studying Japanese at the mid to late intermediate level. Subjects were divided into five groups;1) prequestions with high frequency group, 2) prequestions with low frequency group, 3) postquestions with high frequency group, 4) postquestions with low frequency group, and 5) control group with no questions. The experiment was conducted as follows; first, a pretest was administered to predict reading ability (vocabulary test). This was followed by learning activity (reading), with the objective of content comprehension. Finally, a post test was administered to measure the degree of learning (content comprehension test). The results showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the questioned group and the non-questioned group. Therefore, it can be said that adjunct questions, regardless of their position, contribute to more effective reading comprehension of Japanese text. However, there was no significance concerning the position and frequency of adjunct questions.
