Graphic Display of Linguistic Information in English as a Foreign Language Reading

Graphic Display of Linguistic Information in English as a Foreign Language Reading AKIO SUZUKI Toyo University Tokyo, Japan TAKESHI SATO Shizuoka University Shizuoka, Japan SHUNJI AWAZU Jissen Women’s University Tokyo, Japan Two studies investigated the advantage and instructional effectiveness of the spatial graphic representation of an English sentence with coordinators over a linear sentential representation in English as a foreign language (EFL) reading settings Experiment 1, Study 1, examined whether readers studying EFL could better comprehend the sentence— in which multiple information items are connected by coordinating conjunctions—when provided with a spatial representation than when provided with a sentential representation Experiment of Study examined whether the advantage observed in Experiment was due to Larkin and Simon’s (1987) computational efficacy by testing whether two different task-completion times would affect the performance of two different display groups Study examined the effectiveness of the instruction manual, which we compiled, in enabling students to rearrange a linear text with coordinating conjunctions into a spatial display for self-study The results indicated that the spatial graphic display enhanced EFL readers’ comprehension of sentences with coordinators more than the sentential display did, and EFL readers were able to accurately rearrange a linear sentential text into a spatial display by using the instruction manual he methods of displaying information can be distinguished based on how the configured information is presented and can be broadly divided into two forms: linear sentential representations and spatial graphic representations A number of researchers (e.g., Holley & Dansereau, 1984; Larkin & Simon, 1987; Levelt, 1981; Moxley, 1983; T TESOL QUARTERLY Vol 42, No 4, December 2008 591 Young & O’Shea, 1981) have discussed the nature of these two methods of representation In linear sentential representations, information is displayed in the form of a sequence, like the propositions in a text (Larkin & Simon, 1987) Examples of linear sentential representations are the English sentences that appear in newspapers or books, in which English words are displayed from left to right Holley and Dansereau (1984) posited three features of linear sentential representations: (a) A linear sentence is a serial expression of a multidimensional knowledge structure (b) It explicitly expresses only a small part of the information the author intends to present so that much information remains implicit and has to be understood by the reader through reasoning (c) In order to project a multidimensional structure (intended information) into a onedimensional sequence (sentential representations), the authors are required to repeat the nodes of the structure On the other hand, in a spatial graphic display, the expression of information corresponds to the components of intended information so that each expression includes the information stored in one particular place in the spatial graphic display; this place contains information about relationships with the adjacent loci (Larkin & Simon, 1987) The information or knowledge structure that authors intend to express can be directly represented in a spatial graphic display A matrix, in which words are freely displayed along with ruled lines, is an example of a spatial graphic display A number of empirical studies have been conducted to compare spatial and sentential representations and have reported the advantage that spatial representations have over sentential representations in enhancing discourse comprehension (Levie & Lentz, 1982; Robinson & Kiewra, 1995; Robinson & Schraw, 1994; Robinson & Skinner, 1996; Waller & Whalley, 1987; Winn, Li, & Schill, 1991) In explaining why a spatial representation more easily transmits information than a linear sentential representation does, Waller (1981) proposed the notion of visual argument—the ability to facilitate the construction of conceptual connections during the act of reading Visual argument involves conveying ideas through a spatial graphic display—a visual and spatial arrangement of information—rather than through written linear text Waller (1981) noted that since readers can see—not read—ideas, they are relieved from the burden of interpreting complex relations described in the linear cobwebs of text Spatial graphic displays such as matrices use visual argument to communicate hierarchical relations by placing coordinate concepts below a superordinate one This spatial configuration enables learners to make connections more easily than plain text does On the other hand, by displaying rather than describing the organization or structure of concepts, visual argument al592 TESOL QUARTERLY lows readers to comprehend the intended message with less effort (Winn, 1990; Winn & Holliday, 1982) Because of this visual argument, it is expected that readers provided with a spatial display will process information faster and more effectively than those provided with a sentential display With regard to readers’ efficiency in processing information, Larkin and Simon (1987) proposed the notion of computational efficacy Based on the manner in which readers process one-dimensional and two-dimensional displays, they believe that spatial graphic representations can convey conceptual relationships faster and more easily than can linear sentential texts When information is presented in one-dimensional displays such as texts, readers are required to perform a linear search When the first relevant element concerning a particular concept is found and processed, it has to be stored in the memory before the reader can proceed to search for the next relevant element The routine of find, process, and remember must continue in the reader’s working memory until the last element is found and processed However, in the case of two-dimensional displays such as diagrams, once a relevant element is found, the next element will appear next to or near it This advantageous feature reduces the extent of searching required as well as the burden on the working memory because both elements concerning the concept can be viewed simultaneously in the same place, and, thus, the relationship is represented clearly Thus far, we have discussed the differences between sentential and spatial representations, the effectiveness of spatial representation in facilitating information processing, and the reason that spatial representations are effective In sum, when reading a linear sentential text, readers are required to reason, which implies a successive stepwise combination of small sets of concepts and a rearrangement of these combined concepts in the working memory When reasoning, readers are required to remember the previous steps; thus, the cognitive resources of their working memory space can be easily exhausted (Holley & Dansereau, 1984; Robinson & Kiewra, 1995) On the other hand, a spatial graphic display presents the most recent concept and the relevant previous concepts simultaneously in one or an adjacent location (visual argument) Thus, readers can reason by easily searching and computing the relevant information (computational efficacy) Consequently, this spatial display allows readers to use fewer cognitive resources of their working memories Almost all these previous studies concerning spatial representations have examined first language (L1) reading In second language (L2) reading, the cognitive burden on the working memories of L2 readers who are required to comprehend the text is expected to be greater than the cognitive burden on the working memories of L1 readers (Berquist, GRAPHIC DISPLAY OF LINGUISTIC INFORMATION IN EFL READING 593 1997) In fact, previous studies have reported many differences between reading in L1 and L2 with respect to the cognitive burden of the two modes Some examples of these differences are the problem of lexical access (e.g., Segalowitz & Hebert, 1990); the knowledge of grammar (e.g., Everson & Ke, 1997; Horiba, 1990, 1996; Urquhart & Weir, 1998); the orthographic depth hypothesis (e.g., Koda, 1999); the language threshold (e.g., Alderson, 2000); the difficulty L2 readers have in constructing a situation model (e.g., Zwaan & Brown, 1996); the different strategies that L1 readers and L2 readers use to pay attention to texts (e.g., Bernhardt, 1986); and inefficient use of the working memories pertaining to L2 reading, which is suggested by using the reading span test as a measure (Harrington, 1991) The general consensus is that reading texts in L2 places considerable strain on readers, which can prevent them from achieving a completely effective understanding of the texts (e.g., Miyake & Friedman, 1999; Tsurumi, 2005) Considering L2 learners’ limited working memory capacity, it is important and necessary to determine a way to reduce the cognitive burden on L2 learners when they read L2 texts or to create an instructional design to use their limited working memory capacity optimally In this article, we focus on instructional design that is specifically aimed at enhancing the processing of information items joined by coordinating conjunctions in EFL reading Coordinators, or coordinating conjunctions, such as and, or, and but, combine linguistic units that are equivalent or of the same rank (Richards & Schmidt, 2002) and are used to construct coordinate structures—both phrases and clauses (Swan, 1998) A coordinating conjunction plays the important role of presenting information in EFL reading, because it is an indicator of additional, contrasting, alternative, and other such relationships (Swan, 1998) Furthermore, Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, and Finegan (1999) argue that coordinating conjunctions can add one clausal unit to another and thus extend the body of a single sentence In sentences written in English, multiple information units are connected and represented by a coordinating conjunction, thus inevitably lengthening the sentence Because of the limitation of the L2 readers’ working memory capacity (Berquist, 1997), L2 readers would have difficulty fully comprehending these lengthened, complicated sentences in which coordinating conjunctions connect many information components It appears that L2 readers would find it difficult to comprehend a sentence containing coordinating conjunctions; for instance, “Two officers had been secretly dismissed from the Kanagawa police force, one in 1997 and one last year, for allegedly molesting a woman on a train and for shoplifting, respectively” (“The Price of Police Arrogance,” 1999) This sentence was taken from an actual newspaper article and is difficult to comprehend because the coordinating conjunctions in this sentence 594 TESOL QUARTERLY violate the minimal distance principle, which states that a segment of linguistic units (in this case, “one last year”) must be located next to or at a minimum distance from the relevant segment of linguistic units (in this case, “for shoplifting”) (Richards & Schmidt, 2002) For L2 readers to comprehend this sentence, especially the latter half, they must (a) know that two officers have been dismissed; (b) understand that they were dismissed in different years (one in 1997; the other, last year); (c) reason that the first officer was dismissed for molesting a woman and the second for shoplifting; (d) when they see the word “respectively,” realize that the two officers have been dismissed in different years and for different reasons that correspond to each other in some way Because the information items stating when (1997) and why (for molesting a woman) the first officer was dismissed are not adjacent in this sentence, and the information items about when (last year) and why (shoplifting) the second officer was dismissed are not adjacent, some readers can get confused and thus fail to comprehend these implicit relationships It is expected that the processing and reasoning of information items that are located apart, as in this sentence, places a considerable cognitive burden on readers, especially L2 readers With respect to this difficulty, we argue that we can use a spatial graphic representation of a sentence with coordinating conjunctions, following the spatial representation format suggested by Suzuki (1996) When we use this format, the spatial representation of the sentence about the police officers would appear as shown in Figure By reading the information in a spatial graphic representation (see Figure 1), readers can more easily conceive the interconceptual relations, which were only implicit in a linear sentential representation, using minimal cognitive resources of their working memories This advantage of representing conceptual relationships in the form of a spatial graphic display can be explained in terms of visual argument In the case of the sample sentence, the phrases one in 1997 and one last year are located close to each other vertically; similarly, the phrases for allegedly molesting a woman on a train and for shoplifting are also adjacent, one below the other in a parallel formation Moreover, readers can easily observe the relationships between the phrases one in 1997 and for molesting a woman on a train as well as between one last year and for shoplifting because they are also adjacent—one phrase horizontally contiguous to the other This visual argument (Waller, 1981) of a spatial representation can lead to computational efficacy (Larkin & Simon, 1987) when L2 readers process information, which is expected to result in better comprehension of sentences Based on the principle of computational efficacy (Larkin & Simon, 1987) brought about by using visual argument (Waller, 1981), we predict that in comprehending sentences in which multiple information items GRAPHIC DISPLAY OF LINGUISTIC INFORMATION IN EFL READING 595 FIGURE A Linear Sentential Representation and a Spatial Graphic Representation are joined by coordinating conjunctions, L2 readers provided with spatial representations can outperform those provided with linear sentential representations To be more specific, the first research question is, on the basis of the advantage offered by Larkin and Simon’s (1987) computational efficiency, can EFL readers better comprehend a sentence in which multiple information items are connected by a coordinating conjunction when provided with a spatial representation than when provided with a sentential representation? This question will be resolved in Study with the help of two experiments In actual EFL reading settings, students are unable to optimize the advantage of viewing spatial representations of English sentences with coordinating conjunctions because English sentences with coordinating conjunctions are normally written in the form of a linear sentential display One solution for this problem is to help the students to rearrange a linear display into a spatial display on their own Moreover, the first step of the solution is to compile an instruction manual with guidelines that would enable the students to independently rearrange the linear displays into spatial graphic displays Therefore, the second research question is, are students with an instruction manual that provides guidelines on rearranging a linear sen596 TESOL QUARTERLY tential text with coordinating conjunctions into a spatial graphic display more successful in implementing the rearrangement independently than those without the manual? This question will be answered in Study STUDY Study aimed to investigate whether, in EFL reading, a spatial representation of information that is connected by a coordinating conjunction facilitates better sentence comprehension among students because of their computational efficacy (Larkin & Simon, 1987) Experiment Experiment examined whether EFL readers better comprehend a sentence in which multiple information components are connected by a coordinating conjunction when provided with a spatial representation than when provided with a sentential representation Method Design and participants Display type (a sentential display or a spatial display) was a between-subjects factor The dependent variable was the number of correct answers to the multiple-choice questions based on facts that were explicitly stated in four English sentences as materials (hereafter, this test is referred to as the fact test) Participants were 56 first-year undergraduates majoring in pharmaceutical science at a Japanese private university (17 males, 39 females) All the participants were given a bookstore voucher (equivalent to 1,000 yen) for their participation Based on the results of a general English grammar and vocabulary test, they were assigned to one of two groups (the text group or the spatial group) A t test was conducted for the English grammar and vocabulary test (out of 30 points); however, it did not yield a significant difference in test scores between the two groups (t (54) = 0.77, p = 0.22) It was confirmed that the group members were not significantly different in terms of their English grammar and vocabulary abilities This general English grammar and vocabulary test was taken from the grammar and vocabulary section of the English Language Proficiency Assessment (ELPA; Association for English Language Proficiency Assessment, 2004) The ELPA is used to measure the general English language ability of Japanese students from GRAPHIC DISPLAY OF LINGUISTIC INFORMATION IN EFL READING 597 the first year of junior high school to the third year of senior high school and is widely used as a placement test in a number of Japanese universities The text group (28 participants) was provided with four English sentences, all of which included one or more coordinating conjunctions in a linear sentential representation, and the spatial graphic display group (28 participants) was given the same sentences represented in a spatial display Testing was conducted twice in a typical university classroom with mixed conditions Materials We constructed two different types of displays (a linear sentential representation and a spatial graphic representation depending on the condition) for each of the four sentences, which were taken from newspapers or exercise books pertaining to the TOEFL CBT tests The following four sentences were used as materials in Study 1.1 The Earth’s atmosphere consists of water vapor and a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen, and other gases For many years linguists as well as those who have studied different cultures have wondered about this possibility Two officers had been secretly dismissed from the Kanagawa police force, one in 1997 and one last year, for allegedly molesting a woman on a train and for shoplifting, respectively The motive for having a Christian wedding is that everyone else is doing it, or that it’s cheaper than a Shinto wedding, or that it just looks chic and modern Figure illustrates an example of a graphically displayed English sentence used in the study To eliminate the differences between the students’ English word knowledge, some words were translated into Japanese (up to words for each sentence), which had been selected on the basis of pilot tests conducted before this experiment, and were glossed with all four English sentences in Study The test paper was printed on two B4 pages For the spatial graphic display group, all linear sentential texts were rearranged into spatial graphic displays by Suzuki The rearrangement was based on the principle of visual argument (Waller, 1981): Two-dimensional displays of relevant information were presented simultaneously in the same place to draw out the latent potential of computational efficacy (Larkin & Simon, 1987), specifically following Suzuki’s (1996) format When observing the linear sentential representation in the upper part of Figure 1, we see two lines—one connecting the words 598 Sentence is from Suzuki (2001); Sentences and are from Iwamura, Takahashi, & Braven (2000); and Sentence is from “The price of police arrogance” (1999) TESOL QUARTERLY one and one and the other connecting for and for These lines, which indicate what informational elements are connected by each coordinating conjunction, were included to ensure that the two types of displays are informationally equivalent (Larkin & Simon, 1987), because two lines have also been used in the spatial graphic representation in the lower part of Figure The number of words used in both representations was also exactly the same to ensure informational equivalence across all three experiments In the fact test, we constructed four multiple-choice questions in Japanese, which tested whether the participants could understand the sentence correctly The following is an example of one of the questions from the fact test (translated from the Japanese by Suzuki): Question: When and why were the two officers dismissed by the Kanagawa police? Choose the correct answer from among the following four options One was dismissed last year for molesting a woman; the other, in 1997 for shoplifting Both of them were dismissed in 1997 for molesting a woman as well as shoplifting One was dismissed last year for shoplifting; the other, in 1997 for molesting a woman Both of them were dismissed in 1997—one for molesting a woman and the other for shoplifting Procedure Sessions were conducted for both groups by the first author in an approximately 40-minute period and were timed by a stopwatch First, all students took the English grammar and vocabulary test for 20 minutes, and then the first author asked the students to exchange their test papers with those of others and immediately mark them in accordance with predetermined keys As noted earlier, the students were then assigned to either the spatial graphic display group or the text group for a balanced distribution of students as regards test scores Just before the commencement of the fact test, participants were briefly instructed about the usage of coordinating conjunctions and informed that they had to comprehend the four short sentences well enough to select the correct answer from among the four multiple-choice items They were also told that they could not use dictionaries This brief instruction lasted for about 10 minutes After the test materials were distributed, students were asked to begin the fact test, which would examine how well they comprehended the four English sentences; there was no time restriction for this test The average time taken by the participants to complete the task was approximately 10 Students could refer to the sentences freely when answering this fact test GRAPHIC DISPLAY OF LINGUISTIC INFORMATION IN EFL READING 599 Results and Discussion Means and standard deviations of the correct answers for both tests appear in Table A t test was conducted for the fact test (out of points), and it yielded a significant difference (t (54) = 3.54, p < 0.01) Students comprehended the facts described in the four sentences better when they were provided with a spatial graphic representation (M = 3.18, SD = 0.76) than with a linear sentential representation (M = 2.32, SD = 1.00) Testing confirmed that the performance of the spatial graphic display group was superior to that of the linear sentential group because of the configuration of the information displayed, that is, the spatial representation Larkin and Simon (1987) argue that two representations are informationally equivalent when all the information in one can be inferred from the other and vice versa; each could be constructed from the information provided in the other In addition, with regard to computational equivalence, Larkin and Simon state that two representations are computationally equivalent if any inference can be drawn easily and quickly from the information given explicitly in either and if they are informationally equivalent From the perspective of informational equivalence and computational equivalence or difference, we can hypothesize that the results obtained in Experiment can be attributed to the fact that the linear sentential texts and the spatial graphic representations are informationally equivalent but computationally different because of a spatial graphic display’s inherent capability: computational efficacy Experiment Experiment was designed to test whether the results obtained in Experiment 1—in terms of comprehending sentences with coordinating conjunctions in EFL reading, that spatial representations have an advantage over sentential representations—can be attributed to computational TABLE Means (M) and Standard Deviations (SD) of the Scores of the Correct Answers in the Fact Test and the English Grammar and Vocabulary Test in Experiment 1, Study Test Fact (out of 4) English (out of 30) M SD M SD Sentential display Spatial display 2.32 1.00 17.07 4.61 3.18 0.76 16.21 3.49 Note For the fact and the English tests, n = 28 in each group 600 TESOL QUARTERLY the participants to complete the task was approximately 10 Allowing for pauses between sentences, this completion time implies that the students spent approximately 120 s reading a sentence and answering the question Accordingly, we hypothesized that 120 s would be the watershed for examining the benefit of computational efficacy, and we set up the two groups that were given 300 s as study time, a duration regarded as sufficient for the students to devote enough time to reading the sentence and answering the question Materials The study materials were the same as those used in Experiment 1, as were the fact test and the English grammar and vocabulary test Procedure Sessions were conducted by Suzuki and Sato in an approximately 40-min period for both short-time study groups (120 s) and in a 50-min period for both long-time study groups (300 s) The English grammar and vocabulary test was timed by a stopwatch, and the fact test was timed by computer software (Microsoft PowerPoint) First, all students took the English grammar and vocabulary test (ELPA, 2004) for 20 The procedure of marking the test papers and organizing the groups was the same as in Experiment Based on the test scores, students were assigned to one of the four groups Just before the commencement of the reading and answering period, participants were asked to turn on their computers and launch Microsoft PowerPoint Then, 3.5-inch disks, which included the PowerPoint file (created by Suzuki) of the program for this experiment and answer sheets printed on a single A4 page were distributed After this, students were requested to open the file, execute the program, and wait for the instructions to begin The program comprised 13 slides, and this program led participants through the entire reading and answering period, including the instructions The first slide explained the purpose of this experiment in Japanese; this slide was the only one that the participants themselves could control by pressing the Enter key The computer controlled the viewing time for the rest of the slides automatically Slides and were in Japanese and provided general grammatical knowledge of coordinating conjunctions for sentential groups and explained the principle of rearranging a sentential English sequence into a spatial representation for spatial groups (each slide was viewed for 120 s) Slides 4–6 presented examples of the usage of coordinating conjunctions (sentential representations or spatial representations depending on the condition); only Slide displayed an example sentence with a coordinating conjunction connecting more than two informational items (each slide for 30 s, except Slide 6, which was viewed for 60 s) In Slide (for 60 s), five 602 TESOL QUARTERLY instructions concerning Experiment appeared In Slide 8, an example of a sentence (either in a sentential representation or a spatial representation depending on the condition) and a multiple-choice question with four options was shown (either for 120 s or 300 s depending on the condition) From Slides to 12, students took the fact test (either for 120 s or 300 s depending on the condition) Slide 13 marked the conclusion of this session After the test, the answer sheets were collected Results and Discussion Means and standard deviations for the scores of the correct answers for both tests appear in Table As for the fact test (out of points), a × (representation type × study time) ANOVA yielded a significant main effect of the representation type (F (1, 110) = 7.54, p < 0.01) The representation type × study time interaction effect was also significant (F (1, 110) = 7.85, p < 0.01) A posthoc simple effect test indicated that in the fact test, students in the SS group (M = 3.52, SD = 0.50) outperformed those in the LS group (M = 2.66, SD = 0.99), but the scores of the students in the SL group (M = 3.13, SD = 0.91) were not significantly different from those in the LL group (M = 3.14, SD = 0.73) This interaction, graphically displayed in Figure 2, reveals that the type of display (spatial or linear) used to present the information significantly affected comprehension of the sentence in the short-time (120 s) condition but not in the long-time (300 s) condition Experiment was conducted to test whether the results obtained in Experiment can be attributed to computational efficacy (Larkin & Simon, 1987), following the minimizing-time paradigm The results obTABLE Means (M) and Standard Deviations (SD) of the Scores of the Correct Answers in the Fact Test and the English Grammar and Vocabulary Test in Experiment 2, Study Test Short time group (120s) Fact (out of 4) English (out of 30) Long time group (300s) Fact (out of 4) English (out of 30) Sentential display Spatial display M SD M SD 2.66 0.99 20.83 3.39 3.52 0.50 20.64 2.70 M SD M SD 3.14 0.73 20.86 2.99 3.13 0.91 19.06 5.05 Note For the fact and the English tests, n = 25 in the spatial display short-time (120s) group, n = 29 in the sentential display short-time group, n = 31 in the spatial display long-time (300s) group, and n = 29 in the sentential display long time group GRAPHIC DISPLAY OF LINGUISTIC INFORMATION IN EFL READING 603 FIGURE Scores on the Fact Test (out of 4) for Representation-Type Groups by Study Time in Experiment 2, Study tained in Experiment support our hypothesis that the advantage of spatial graphic representation was the result of computational efficacy, which implies that computation necessary for searching relevant information is faster when a reader sees a spatial graphic representation than when she or he sees a linear sentential representation STUDY Study indicated that the spatial graphic display of English sentences with coordinating conjunctions can enhance L2 readers’ comprehension of these sentences because of computational efficacy (Larkin & Simon, 1987) As mentioned earlier, it is important and necessary to help the students rearrange a linear display into a spatial display on their own As the first step of this help, we compiled an instruction manual with guidelines that were expected to enable the students to independently rearrange linear displays into spatial displays Study aimed to examine whether 604 TESOL QUARTERLY students who possessed such an instruction manual were more successful in independently implementing the rearrangement than those without the manual Method Design and Participants Provision of an instruction manual to rearrange a sentential sequence into a spatial representation (with or without instruction) was a betweensubjects factor The dependent variable was how well participants could rearrange sentential texts into spatial representations Participants were 62 first-year undergraduates majoring in pharmaceutics at a Japanese private university (17 males, 45 females) All the participants were given a bookstore voucher (equivalent to 500 yen) for their participation Participants were given a general English grammar and vocabulary test, and a t test was conducted on it (out of 30); however, it did not yield a significant difference in test scores between the two groups (t (60) = 0.69, p = 0.24) Based on the results of the general English grammar and vocabulary test, participants were assigned to one of the following two groups One group (31 participants) was provided with an instruction manual that illustrates how to rearrange a linear sentential English text with one or more coordinating conjunctions, and the other (31 participants) was not provided with such a manual This task took place twice in a typical university classroom with mixed conditions Materials Five English sentences with coordinating conjunctions were taken from newspapers or exercise books pertaining to the TOEFL CBT tests as materials, and an example of their spatial representations correctly rearranged in Study appears in Figure Five English sentences were printed on a single A4 page; at the top of the page, there were instructions stating, “Please rearrange the following five English sentences so that two words, phrases, or clauses are displayed one below the other in a parallel formation and are centered around the coordinating conjunction.” Students were instructed to present these five rearranged displays on the blank space included on the page In addition, a general illustration of the usage of English coordinating conjunctions printed on a single A4 page was given to both groups This illustration included explanations such as “coordinating conjunctions connect more than one information item located before and after these conjunctions”; “there GRAPHIC DISPLAY OF LINGUISTIC INFORMATION IN EFL READING 605 FIGURE An Example of Linear Sentential Representations to be Rearranged and Spatial Graphic Representations Correctly Rearranged in Study are a variety of conjunctions such as and, or, so, but, and as well as”; and “the information to be connected by coordinating conjunctions should be equivalent from the grammatical and semantic perspectives.” The illustration also presented examples of three sentences with coordinating conjunctions and the spatial rearrangement of these sentences, which enabled students in both groups to understand how to rearrange sentential texts into spatial representations, and it provided them with general knowledge about the usage of coordinating conjunctions All these instructions were provided in Japanese In addition, only the with-instruction group was provided with a stepwise instruction manual written in Japanese (see Appendix), which listed the following four steps: Identify the word classes of the words located immediately after the coordinating conjunctions Find the words that have the same word class as those identified in step immediately before the coordinating conjunction Arrange the phrases that belong to the same word class and that were identified in steps and one below the other in a parallel formation Ensure that the two phrases arranged in step belong to exactly the same word class Procedure Sessions were conducted by the first author for both the groups for a period of approximately 40 min; the sessions were timed using a stop606 TESOL QUARTERLY watch First, all students took the English grammar and vocabulary test (ELPA, 2004) for 20 The procedure for marking test papers and organizing groups was the same as that in Study A one-page explanation of coordinating conjunctions was distributed to both groups (5-min reading time), and then the students were provided with answer sheets An instruction manual (see Appendix) was provided only to the withinstruction group, and then both groups performed the task for 10 The students in the with-instruction group were allowed to refer to the manual while they were performing the task In addition, all the participants in both the groups were allowed to use an English–Japanese dictionary while performing the task Scoring In the rearranging test, students were assigned 0, 1, 2, or points as follows: points: Students displayed wrong or irrelevant information (words, phrases, clauses) one below the other, or they displayed only two (instead of the required three) informational items one below the other, or relevant informational items were placed not one below the other but in other forms point: Either the first or last informational items that were to be placed one below the other in a parallel formation was not correct points: Words, phrases, or clauses—all of which were not informational items connected by a coordinating conjunction—were displayed at the wrong location, but informational items connected by a coordinating conjunction were correctly displayed one below the other in a parallel formation points: The information items connected by a coordinating conjunction were correctly displayed one below the other in a parallel formation; the first and last of these information items were correct; and words, phrases, or clauses other than these informational items were correctly displayed In coding this test, two coders—Sato and Awazu—independently assigned 0–3 points to the participants’ displays without knowing the participant’s group affiliation and reached an agreement of 78.39% (243 of 310 answers were placed in identical categories) The points that were scored differently by the two coders were scored again by a third coder, who was also not aware of the group affiliation When the points scored by either the first coder or the second coder matched those scored by the third coder, the matched score was considered as the result Actual examples of successful and unsuccessful rearrangements performed by students are shown in Figure GRAPHIC DISPLAY OF LINGUISTIC INFORMATION IN EFL READING 607 FIGURE Examples of Successful and Unsuccessful Rearrangements of Texts Results and Discussion Means and standard deviations for the correct answers of both tests appear in Table A t test was conducted for the rearranging test (out of 15 points) and it yielded a significant difference (t (60) = 2.29, p < 0.01) Students who were provided with an instruction manual performed better (M = 11.36, SD = 2.69) than those who were not provided with the manual did (M = 9.00, SD = 3.74) in rearranging five sentential texts with a coordinating conjunction into spatial representations TABLE Means (M) and Standard Deviations (SD) of the Scores of the Correct Answers in the Rearranging Test and the English Grammar and Vocabulary Test in Study Test Rearranging (out of 15) English (out of 30) M SD M SD With instruction Without instruction 11.36 2.69 17.35 3.49 9.00 3.74 16.48 4.70 Note For the rearranging and the English tests, n = 31 in each group 608 TESOL QUARTERLY The results of Study indicated that the instruction manual we prepared was effective for L2 readers—in an EFL setting in this case—to independently rearrange a sentential text with a coordinating conjunction into a spatial display The successfully arranged displays confirmed that students can benefit from Larkin & Simon’s (1987) computational efficacy to comprehend lengthy sentences with coordinate conjunctions Because our manual comprised merely a single A4 page, and the students took only 10 to study the manual, it can be argued that L2 readers can rearrange a sentential text with a coordinating conjunction into a spatial representation without lengthy special training sessions but with provision of this instruction manual to enable them to capitalize on spatial representation for self-study GENERAL DISCUSSION The results obtained in Experiment 1, Study 1, indicate that students who were provided with the spatial representations of information joined by coordinating conjunctions outperformed those provided with sentential texts in EFL reading (see Table 1) The findings of this experiment revealed that the relevant informational items were displayed in spatial representations, permitting simultaneous processing, rather than in sentential representations requiring sequential processing Experiment 2, Study 1, investigated the explanatory variable of the advantage of a spatial representation confirmed in Experiment We predicted that because of the computational efficacy (Larkin & Simon, 1987) brought about by the visual argument (Waller, 1981) of spatial representations, in which the relevant informational items were displayed simultaneously at one or at an adjacent location, L2 readers provided with spatial representations could conserve cognitive resources and use them to better comprehend L2 sentences even with limited study time On the other hand, those provided with sentential texts and limited study time could not conserve cognitive resources for comprehension, and this difference disappeared when a sufficiently long period of study time was allocated to both display conditions The findings obtained in this experiment supported our hypothesis (see Table 2) From this result, we can conclude that the advantage of spatial representations of coordinating conjunctions over sentential representations in EFL reading should be attributed to computational efficacy brought about by the spatial representation’s visual argument In Study 2, we examined the effectiveness of our instruction manual in enabling students to rearrange a sentential sequence into a spatial representation The findings showed that those provided with a manual GRAPHIC DISPLAY OF LINGUISTIC INFORMATION IN EFL READING 609 were more successful in rearranging a linear sentential text into a spatial representation than those not provided with it (see Table 3), which confirmed that L2 readers can rearrange a sentential text into a spatial representation with more accuracy by using the instruction manual Thus, the successfully rearranged displays of L2 readers proved that they can follow the directions of our instruction manual; therefore, L2 readers could possibly make optimum use of spatial representations in selfstudy PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS The findings presented in this research are of great significance for educators in the following three ways First, we have succeeded in producing a configuration or format of spatial representation that has proved to be useful for improving students’ comprehension of English sentences with coordinating conjunctions Because a problem solver would have to know how to construct a good spatial display that allows him or her to capitalize on the virtues of computational efficacy (Larkin & Simon, 1987), our spatial graphic format would be an adequate solution Our format was designed to display the relevant informational items one below the other in a parallel formation; this format does not require successive eye fixation (Minsky, 1975) Second, we have discovered why spatial representations of English sentences with coordinating conjunctions are easier to comprehend than linear sentential texts in EFL reading: The visual argument of spatial representations enables students to process the information in the sentences more easily This advantage is referred to as computational efficacy (Larkin & Simon, 1987), which has great potential significance because this spatial graphic format can enhance locating information (Guthrie, Siefert, & Kirsch, 1986) Locating information in written texts can be defined as learners’ scanning of a text to detect a specific informational item from a number of informational items displayed for visual inspection (Guthrie, 1988) Guthrie et al (1986) argued that locating information plays an important role in literacy because it consumes the majority of occupational adult reading time as well as the majority of school time—in school, children are often asked to engage in an activity to find specific points in a large body of written language (Guthrie & Mosenthal, 1987) With regard to this, Guthrie suggested the following five-step process of locating information: (a) goal formation, (b) category selection, (c) extraction of information, (d) integration, and (e) recycling The spatial representation of informational items joined by coordi610 TESOL QUARTERLY nating conjunctions in EFL reading is expected to be of help in steps (b), (c), and (d) of the locating-information process In these three steps, students are expected to select an appropriate category, extract information that is useful for their purpose, and then integrate the extracted information with previously obtained information In a spatial display, two relevant informational items are located one below the other These two—or more—lines of information that are parallel will be perceived as one category by readers Readers can extract information items as well as integrate them much more easily with the aid of this spatial display than with a linear sentential text, because with linear sentential text, they have to independently construct an appropriate category, extract information, and integrate information through successive processing Third, in Study 2, we succeeded in assessing the effectiveness of an instruction manual that enabled the students to rearrange a sentence with coordinating conjunctions into a spatial graphic display in EFL reading When students followed this instruction manual, they were expected to succeed in rearranging a sentence more accurately Study was originally designed to examine the effectiveness of our instruction manual providing guidelines on rearranging sentences into spatial graphic displays in EFL reading Therefore, students were given the task of rearranging a sentential text into a spatial representation with or without the instruction manual The results indicated the effectiveness of the manual: This task itself—rearranging sentential text into a spatial graphic representation—forced students to focus on the structure of coordinating conjunctions With respect to the relationship between reading and writing, Carlson (1993) claims that the processes used by a reader to comprehend a text may be the same processes used by a writer to create meaning, which in turn implies that the act of reading may affect the act of writing to some extent From this perspective, the task of transforming a linear sentential text with coordinating conjunctions into a spatial representation can serve as a set of exercises for L2 learners to accurately write an English sentence with a coordinating conjunction Although Study did not directly investigate its effect on students’ writing, the results suggest that the rearrangement task has the potential to enable L2 learners to accurately write an English sentence containing a coordinating conjunction Future studies should undertake to determine if sentence rearrangement improves writing ability We hope that educators and researchers will continue to consider and examine the application of spatial displays as aids to EFL reading Because this study was conducted solely with Japanese learners of English, it would be difficult to generalize the results and conclusions to native speakers of languages other than Japanese who are studying English Thus, it is necessary to examine whether the same results are obtained GRAPHIC DISPLAY OF LINGUISTIC INFORMATION IN EFL READING 611 with native speakers of other languages Besides, the advantage of the spatial display of information connected by coordinate conjunctions may be gained with students’ L1; therefore, in future research, it is also necessary to examine this aspect In terms of specific educational implications, although most previous studies investigating the facilitative effectiveness of spatial diagrams or graphic organizers have thus far examined the macrostructure of discourse comprehension, such as organization or the argument of whole texts (e.g., Guri-Rosenblit, 1988; Hegarty & Just, 1993; Moore, Chan, & Au, 1993; Robinson & Kiewra, 1995; Robinson & Schraw, 1994), this study focused on the facilitative effectiveness of spatial displays of the microstructure of discourse; that is, we focused on an English grammatical element: a coordinating conjunction Sato (1998, p 135) noted the importance of Japanese students understanding the structure of English sentences with coordinating conjunctions The findings of this research suggest that the cognitive burden on EFL readers can be reduced by using spatial displays of information connected by coordinate conjunctions Accordingly, we should encourage students to use spatial representations when they face difficulties in comprehending lengthy English sentences Some EFL textbooks, such as those written by Suzuki (2001) and Tomita and Sakurai (1995), already encourage students to rearrange linear English sentences into spatial displays of information connected by coordinate conjunctions Our research helps to provide a theoretical basis for these materials However, this research has some limitations Although we succeeded in confirming that the instructional manual helps students rearrange a linear English sentence into a spatial representation, our study did not directly investigate whether students can comprehend English sentences with coordinate conjunctions better by rearranging them into spatial representations Thus, in future research, it is necessary to examine whether the act of rearranging linear English texts into spatial representations facilitates comprehension for EFL readers In addition, our research focused on EFL students’ comprehension at the level of English sentences Although spatial representations can be expected to reduce EFL students’ cognitive burden, subsequent research should examine whether spatial representations can enable EFL students to better comprehend sentences that not have coordinate conjunctions THE AUTHORS Akio Suzuki is an assistant professor at Toyo University, Tokyo, Japan His area of specialization is learning science His current research interests include the role of graphic organizers as adjunct aids for discourse comprehension (in L1 and L2) 612 TESOL QUARTERLY Takeshi Sato is an assistant professor at Shizuoka University, Shizuoka, Japan He holds a master’s degree from Keio University, Japan, and Institute of Education, University of London, England His current interests include second vocabulary learning, information and communication technology in L2 learning, and World Englishes Shunji Awazu is an associate professor at Jissen Women’s University, Tokyo, Japan His area of specialization is cognitive science His current interests include mental representation of meanings of L2 words REFERENCES Alderson, J C (2000) Assessing reading New York: Cambridge University Press Association for English Language Proficiency Assessment (2004) Assessment of Communicative English Test Tokyo: Kirihara Press Bernhardt, E B (1986) Cognitive processes in L2: An examination of reading behaviors In J Lantolf & A Labarca (Eds.), Delaware symposia on language studies: Research in second language acquisition in the classroom setting (pp 35–50) Norwood, NJ: Ablex Berquist, B (1997) 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