This study examines how advanced Japanese learners misunderstand the meanings of texts within Japanese novels. Four native Chinese speakers studying at a graduate school in Japan participated in the survey, which collected concurrent verbal reports. The results revealed two types of misunderstandings: (a) text cohesion-related misunderstandings, such as when readers make incorrect inferences about unmarked agents or speakers; and (b) misunderstandings related to the interpretation of words and sentences. Based on these observations, this paper suggests two practices that may be effective for reading Japanese novels: namely, (i) learning skills to improve comprehension for text cohesion and different sentences; and (ii) promoting readers' contextual interpretation of words and sentences.

This study analyzes conversation protocols recorded during lessons in order to investigate the processes by high-school students comprehend unfamiliar vocabulary. Whenever students encounter items of unfamiliar vocabulary while reading critical essays in class, in addition to obviously consulting dictionaries, students also continue reading texts by sharing vocabulary information with other student and by attempting to describe the meaning in either more abstract or more concrete expressions in order to establish the appropriate meaning for the given context. Before the students studies the critical essays from the textbook in class, 86 of the words (33%) were known by less than 60% of the students. However, after training in vocabulary learning, the number of students who understood the appropriate meaning increased significantly for all the previously unknown vocabulary.

Some readers are unable to accurately comprehend texts and tend to distort the meaning based on social or moral desirability. To investigate the characteristics of readers who avoid reading based on moral schema, this study administered the Reader Belief Questionnaire, a critical thinking disposition scale, and a task in which participants had to evaluate the appropriateness of concluding sentences in the following situations: (1) appropriate sentences which were derived from the earlier context, (2) inappropriate sentences, and (3) morally biased sentences. The results of the experiment indicated that readers who scored high on the “inquiry mind” factor of the critical thinking scale and had a critical thinking disposition could distinguish appropriate conclusions from the moral biased ones. This indicates that an inquisitive mind with the desire for a wider variety of information affects the process of evaluating information while deriving conclusions, and encourages unbiased and appropriate reading.