The present study examined the following three points based on an experimental session of speed reading classes of intermediate learners of Japanese.
1) The effect of prior presentations of some informations of post-test texts such as words, themes, and sentence structures to the learners' reading rate and content comprehension of the given texts. 2) The effect of prior presentations of post-text informations mentioned above to other areas of reading beside rate and comprehension. 3) The "trade-off" relationship between "rate" and "accuracy" of reading.
The subjects were instructed to read as quickly as possible, controlling their paces of reading to try to understand approximately 70% of the content of the given text.
The results showed the following. 1) The prior presentations of post-text informations facilitated reading rate of the subjects who showed a higher understanding of the content in texts. 2) The prior presentations of post-text informations facilitated the subjects' "global understanding" of the content rather than the surface structure of the sentences. 3) The subjects who obtained low scores in comprehension tests showed a loss in accuracy when reading quickly, whereas the subjects who obtained high scores in comprehension test did not lose the accuracy even when reading quickly.
Result 3) indicates that in speed reading in a foreign language, "data-limited" processes and "resource-limited" processes are closely related to each other.