Proper nouns constitute a lexical class with special properties and are thus treated differently from other words by second language acquisition researchers. An assumption exists that even low-proficiency learners will find them unproblematic, yet research suggests this assumption might be misplaced. The present study involved two self-paced reading experiments designed to investigate proper nouns’ influence on Japanese university students’ reading fluency. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with 60 decontextualized sentences containing 30 proper nouns and 30 common nouns to determine whether they are processed in a similar manner. In Experiment 2, participants read another 60 sentences comprising a book chapter to explore the effects of repeated exposure to a set of proper nouns. The results indicated that proper nouns are processed in a similar manner to common nouns in terms of disrupting reading fluency. The implications for language learning pedagogy, in particular extensive reading, are discussed.

专有名词构成具有特殊属性的词汇类别，因此第二语言习得研究人员将其与其他单词区别对待。存在一种假设，即即使是低水平的学习者也会发现它们没有问题，但研究表明这种假设可能是错误的。本研究涉及两项自定进度的阅读实验，旨在调查专有名词对日本大学生阅读流畅性的影响。在实验 1 中，向参与者提供了 60 个脱离语境的句子，其中包含 30 个专有名词和 30 个普通名词，以确定它们是否以类似的方式进行处理。在实验 2 中，参与者阅读了另外 60 个句子，其中包含一本书的章节，以探索重复接触一组专有名词的影响。结果表明，在破坏阅读流畅性方面，专有名词的处理方式与普通名词类似。讨论了对语言学习教学法，特别是广泛阅读的影响。