The Effects of Chunk Reading Training on the Syntactic Processing Skills and Reading Spans of Japanese Learners of English

The present study investigated the impact of chunk reading training (CRT) on the online syntactic processing and verbal working memory (WM) of Japanese EFL (English as a foreign language) learners in secondary school. For four weeks, the treatment group (N = 31) underwent CRT, while the control group (N = 25) participated in reading training in block format. A reading span test (RST) was administered as the pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest in this study to assess learners' online syntactic processing and verbal WM. The results showed that syntactic processing and verbal WM increased only in the treatment group after training, but the differences between the two groups were not statistically significant. Nevertheless, these results suggest that CRT has the potential to positively affect the development of learners' online syntactic processing skills and verbal WM.