2001 年 38 巻 p. 1-19
Research in L2 reading has shown the effects of various types of text structure on reading comprehension. To date, however, not enough is known about the quality of those effects. The purpose of this research is to investigate the qualitative effects of text organization difference on L2 reading comprehension and also examine interactions between a textual manipulation effect and language factors. In this study, the effects of two types of text organization patterns (problem-' solution and solution-' problem) on written recall were compared in both Japanese and English. The 329 high-intermediate proficiency Japanese college students who participated in this study produced written recall about a target passage in the two text organization conditions after reading the passage either in Japanese or English. Whole idea units and idea units which reflect main ideas of the text were analyzed on two types of scores: total score and paragraph-based score. Results showed that there was no significant difference between the two text organization patterns in the quantity of information, namely total scores of recalled idea units, while there were differences in the quality of information in terms of paragraph-based difference, In addition, the study pointed out the possibility of linguistic factors overriding the textual manipulation effect. Finally, this research shows that written recall analysis can provide rich qualitative information which allows the research to explore the depth of the L2 reading processes.