Reading English Academic Texts: Evidence from ESL Undergraduates’ Eye Movement Data

Abstract

Reading English academic texts can be a daunting task for many ESL university students. The complex features of academic texts which include academic discourse, text structure, and vocabulary may affect the reading process. An investigation of how ESL university students read English academic reading materials would provide insights on what learners do to attain comprehension of the text. This study aims to investigate the cognitive processes that take place when ESL undergraduates read English academic texts using eye movement data. Quantitative data (total fixation duration, total fixation count, fixation duration) and qualitative data (scan path) of eye movements derived from eye tracker accompanied with retrospective interview were collected from twenty ESL undergraduates from two academic programmes. The findings revealed that participants who failed to recall the texts had longer fixation duration and resulted in more in words regressions compared to participants who recalled and explained the texts accurately. Vocabulary used in academic texts was found to be one of the factors that affect the comprehension of the texts. The findings of the study suggest that specialised instructions that emphasise academic reading skills should be implemented at the early level of tertiary education.

Reading Glossed Passages in English to Improve Comprehension: An Eye Tracking Study

“…Eye tracking measures or indices therefore provide spatial and temporal resolution of visual attention. Higher values in the length and number of fixations could suggest processing or comprehension difficulties (Rayner et al, 2006;Scheiter & Eitel, 2017;Sulaiman et al, 2020).…”

“…Furthermore, many of them, regardless of the labels, found the texts difficult mostly because of the unfamiliar and difficult vocabulary. Sulaiman et al (2020) suggested that the vocabulary used in academic texts could implicate text comprehension. Despite acknowledging that readers need adequate vocabulary knowledge to comprehend academic texts, the study did not measure the participants' vocabulary knowledge and establish its link with comprehension of the texts.…”

“…These values indicate that overall, the glossed passages were read for a longer period and received more fixations compared to the non-glossed passage. Higher values in fixation duration and fixation count could suggest comprehension difficulties during reading (Rayner et al, 2006;Scheiter & Eitel, 2017;Sulaiman et al, 2020). The participants could have read the glossed passages longer because they contained more unfamiliar words compared to the non-glossed passage and they needed to map the unfamiliar words with their definitions in the glossary.…”

Processing of a Multi-representational Science Passage by ESL Learners

“…The methodology is used in research across different areas of studies, for instance, to examine the processing of literal versus metaphorical expressions in Malay (Tengku & Salehuddin, 2020), graphic novels in English (Mohd Yusof et al, 2020) and science terminologies in Mandarin (Soh, 2017). Local eye-tracking studies have also evolved to incorporate retrospective interview data as a methodological triangulation strategy (Warid Mihat et al, 2018) as exemplified in Sulaiman et al (2020). However, we are not aware of any studies that explore the reading processes of Malaysian ESL learners while reading science texts with graphics.…”

Effects of employing In-service EFL Teachers Strategy-based Instruction on their Performance of Teaching Listening Comprehension in Amman-Jordan

“…According to Zhang (2012) and Amaluddin et al (2018), a strategy -based instruction is important for teachers to use as they help learners develop listening comprehension, and research revealed that good learners used various metacognitive, cognitive, and social strategies, and the less able learners became better when they were taught these strategies (Osada, 2004;& field, 1998). Likewise, Sulaiman et al, (2020) clarified that cognitive strategies, as a part of the strategy-based instruction, are quite significant to learners because the more learners practice them, the more they could recognize texts, make inferences, and eventually understand it thoroughly.…”