The study reported in this paper examined four groups of readers (L2-Intermediate, L2-Advanced, L1-Japanese, and L1-English) when they processed and recalled two passages that varied in degree of causal coherence (Trabasso & van den Broek, 1985). Concurrent verbal reports and recall data were collected. It was found that L1 readers used much of their attention for higher level processes such as the generation of inferences and general knowledge associations. They processed the high- and low-coherence texts differently, generating more elaborations for low-coherence texts than for high-coherence texts. Furthermore, L1 readers generated backward inferences according to the text's causal structure and recalled events with many causal connections more frequently than events with few connections. These findings confirm L1 research findings (Fletcher & Bloom, 1988; Goldman & Varnhargen, 1986; Graesser & Clark, 1985; Singer, 1995; Trabasso & van den Broek, 1985; van den Broek, 1994). On the other hand, L2 readers paid more attention to lower level processes and did not process differently between the high- and low-coherence texts. L2-Advanced readers generated both backward and forward inferences during reading, whereas L2-lntermediate readers did not. Although L2-Advanced readers' generation of backward inferences did not correspond to the text's causal structure, their second recall indicated they were sensitive to it. A closer look at the data suggests that there were some delays in lower level processes such as understanding words and sentences, as well as resolution of anaphoric relations by these readers.

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This study assessed the role that structural properties of texts play in the mental representations of second-language (L2) readers. In particular, we investigated the extent to which 47 L2 readers of English used structural properties of a text (causal factors, story-grammar category, and hierarchical level) to "fill in" gaps in their mental representations. L2 readers' recall protocols of narrative texts were analyzed and compared with those of 72 L1 readers of English using two scoring criteria: meaning-preserving and structure-preserving. The first credits information that is either verbatim or a close paraphrase of the original textual information; the second credits information that fulfills the same structural function as the original text unit. We found that L2 readers'We thank Erik Arthur for his help in scoring the recall protocols; Hifumi Ito for her help with translation; and Hidetaka Tamai for data collection. We also acknowledge the students of Midorigaoka Senior High School for their participation. T w o anonymous reviewers made useful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Requests for reprints may be sent to Yukie Horiba, Department of Asian Languages, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003. Telephone: (413) 545-0886. Internet: yukieh@titan.ucc.umas.edu 345 346 Language Learning VOl. 43, No. 3structure-preserving recalls were substantially higher than were their meaning-preservingrecalls, and that the effects of particular structural properties (i.e., causal connections and story-grammar category) interacted with the scoring criterion. These results indicate that these L2 readers used topdown processing to preserve the structural integrity of a text.

In this study, word knowledge and its relation to text comprehension was examined with 50 Chinese-and 20 Korean-speaking second language (L2) learners and 40 first language (L1) speakers of Japanese. Breadth and depth of word knowledge were assessed by a word-definition matching test and a word-associates selection test, respectively. Text comprehension, which was assessed by recall and summary completion, was regressed with word knowledge scores. The results suggest, first, that there are some differences in the relative strengths in components of word knowledge between Chinese and Korean speakers and between L2 learners and L1 speakers. Second, L2 learners' text comprehension is moderately correlated with breadth and depth of word knowledge, with breadth being a stronger explanatory variable, unlike the case for native speakers. Among components of word knowledge, syntagmatic association seems to be particularly important to Chinese speakers, but not to Korean speakers and to natives. Thus, L2 learners' word knowledge and its relation to text comprehension may be influenced in a complex way by L1-related factors.