What problems do Japanese language learners encounter in the reading process based on bottom-up processing?

Abstract

Bottom-up processing is the basis for processing linguistic information in foreign language reading. It is considered to be a priority. Bottom-up processing requires lower-level processing consisting of lexical access, syntactic analysis, and semantic proposition formation. The following is a summary of the problems encountered by learners of Japanese at each of the lower levels of processing. In the lexical access process, incorrect identification of characters and words can result in incorrect understanding of characters and words. It can also lead to an incorrect understanding of sentences due to the improper separation of strings of characters into words. In the process of syntactic parsing, the fact that certain grammatical items have different functions or uses, or have the same function or use but are expressed in different grammatical items, can make it difficult to understand the meaning. Further, ambiguous or complex structures also affect comprehension and processing time. In the process of forming semantic propositions, the inability to accurately construct meaning is due to the insufficient depth of lexical knowledge. Another factor is the difficulty in reconstructing the meaning of long sentences because they contain so much information that they can no longer be memorized. Finally, the distance between syntactic engagements is far apart, making it difficult to relate the words in a sentence to each other. To address these problems in the future, the authors aim to examine and propose an approach to teaching reading comprehension based on a theoretical framework that takes into account processing at the sentence level and aims to provide a deeper understanding of the meaning of sentences.