This study investigates the effect of the specific reading schema held by the reader on the reading comprehension of an explanatory text. In the first experiment, subjects received a passage on politeness, and were instructed to summarize it and give their opinions on it. The summary was intended to clarify the reading comprehension constructed by the reader and the opinion was the measure for the specific reading schema held by the reader. The main results are as follows. From the analysis of the IUs (Idea Units) and the coherence relations in the summary, it was concluded that nearly half of the readers had merely skimmed through the text. They read inappropriately and tended to express the inadequate schema as a moralistic or instructive one. On the contrary, the subjects who read appropriately (reading without skipping) were more likely to refer to the main theme of the text. In the second experiment, the subjects received the same passage as in the first experiment, and were instructed to answer the question that "What does the author intend to communicate through this passage-" with a free essay. The task was intended to facilitate understanding. The main results are as follows. The way of instruction referred to above did not have a significant effect on facilitating reading appropriately. This is reflected by the fact that the number of subjects who fulfilled the task successfully was under 60%. Subjects who read appropriately made use of fewer reading schemes of higher quality than subjects who read inappropriately. Based upon these results, it is suggested that "an inappropriate comprehension of an explanatory text" is the result of the reader's different comprehension from the original context through the use of inappropriate and individual "reading schemes" such as "the Moral Reading Schema (MRS)." This occurs because they failed to comprehend the text by focusing on its form and actual content.

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Matrix-method is being advocated as a strategy for promoting the application of the equivalent rule proposition(p≡q). This method intends to improve the reliance on the presented rule through reducing the validity of the anti-rule proposition(p・not-q and not-p・q). However, previous studies have indicated that its effect is reduced in cases where the learners posit "pseudo-exceptions", i.e. instances erroneously treated as exceptions. The purpose of this study was to investigate how to cope with this problem. The results of two experiments made clear that replacing the "pseudo-exceptions" with positive instances by Matrix-method was effective to promote application of rules. And it was suggested that this procedure made leaners reconsider "pseudo-exceptions" as positive instances and maintained the effect of Matrix-method even if the "pseudo-exceptions" came to mind.

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This paper deals with students' misconception and a proposal to rectify it by using a new method. Many students think that the flowers of plants growing from bulbs (e.g. tulip) or potato sets do not produce seeds. To correct this misconception Magara (1990) presented students with a reading material explaining why a tulip was raised from a bulb although it produced seeds. After reading the materials, the students were able to accept the fact that a tulip produced seeds, but many of them failed to generalize this to other bulbous plants (e.g. hyacinth) and potato. In this study, in addition to the explanation given to Magara's students, we presented our students with the classification table of plants, and explained that plants could be divided into two categories, i.e. plants, that reproduce by seed, and plants that reproduce by spore. In the post-test, the students could answer that not only tulips but also hyacinths and potatoes had seeds.

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The authors designed a teaching-learning course that would allow elementary school students to understand economic laws on interrelation between society and distribution economy in history. The course involved a combination of 3 factors: terms-manipulation, everyday life experiences, and scientific experiences. After the 11 sessions of teaching-learning activities, almost all the students were able to apply the economic laws to explain the economic problems in test questions. However, the students did not reach the stage where they would engage independently in hypothesis-verification activities connected to economic problems. Although these results tend to confirm the effect of the 3 proposed factors on learning, there seem to remain some serious problems concerning the lack of hypothesis-verification activities.

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[in Japanese]

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