Effects of Seductive Details on Expository Text Comprehension Among Japanese EFL Readers

DOI

Bibliographic Information

Other Title
  • Seductive Detailsが日本人EFL学習者の説明文読解に与える影響

Abstract

This study examined how seductive details, interesting but unimportant text information, influenced expository text comprehension of Japanese EFL learners. Whereas inserting seductive details originally aims to motivate learners to read complicated expository texts, past L1 studies suggest that such information distracts their attention from the main ideas of the text. In this study, 123 Japanese university students read an expository text either with or without seductive details (the +SD vs. the -SD condition), and then completed immediate and one-week-delayed recall tasks. The results of the recall tasks showed that the learners' attention was strongly drawn to the seductive details, regardless of their English reading proficiency. However, the seductive details did not hinder the learners' comprehension of the base text and main ideas. While the seductive details did not affect the quantity of text comprehension, detailed comparisons showed that they influenced what the learners remembered from the text. These findings suggest that seductive details do not always work negatively in expository reading, and the relationships between seductive details and surrounding contexts are closely relevant to whether seductive details have positive or negative effects.

Journal

Details 詳細情報について

  • CRID
    1390001205823158656
  • NII Article ID
    110010006579
  • DOI
    10.20581/arele.26.0_29
  • ISSN
    24320412
    13448560
  • Text Lang
    en
  • Data Source
    • JaLC
    • CiNii Articles
  • Abstract License Flag
    Disallowed

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