抄録
The study presents the following experiments: the difference between silent and oral reading concerning sentence comprehension; the effect on learners who make phonological encoding during silent reading; and the difference between them caused by involuntary gestures. Through the experiments, phonological encoding was examined through the effect of articulatory suppression. The participants were asked to read sentences under six different conditions: silent with no-tapping & no-gestures; silent with gestures; silent with tapping; oral with no-tapping & no-gestures; oral with gestures; oral with tapping; and articulatory-suppression. Experiment 1 showed no difference between silent and oral reading concerning sentence comprehension. Experiment 2 indicated that phonological encoding during silent reading may improve comprehension of both silent and oral reading. Experiment 3 was designed to test whether non-iconic movements facilitate the retrieval of sentence comprehension during oral reading. Results showed gestural learners’ comprehension improved with gestures. However, non-gestural learners’ comprehension was weaker when required to gesture than when only reading aloud.
