Contribution of the Incomplete Use of Macro-Rules to Reading Comprehension Difficulty in Japanese Fourth to Sixth Graders

Abstract

e purpose of the study was to investigate the background factors involved in reading comprehension di culty by examining the contribution of the incomplete use of three macro-rules namely, the deletion rule, generalization rule, and construction rule as well as the poor understanding of the reversible relationships in single paragraphs. e results revealed that the performance of fourth to sixth graders who had di culties with Kanji reading was low in understanding the reversible relationship of a text in a single paragraph; verbal working memory was shown to be the signi cant background factor. Deletion of the less important parts of sentences, namely, applying the macro-rule of deletion, was found to be the background factor of reading comprehension di culty in all graders who had no di culty with Kanji reading. It is clari ed that the background factors of reading comprehension di culty vary between children with or without Kanji reading di culty. Consequently, special support for facilitating reading comprehension is needed di erentially.