Differences between EFL Beginners and Intermediate Level Readers When Reading Onscreen Narrative Text with Pictures: A Study of Eye Movements as a Guide to Personalization

Abstract

Compared to reading text alone, pictures are regarded as easier for readers to comprehend the context. For EFL readers, their reading behavior on text with pictures needs to be carefully inspected. The study aims to examine how different are the viewing behaviors of EFL beginners versus intermediate readers on reading narrative paragraphs and accompanying pictures. Seventeen junior high and twenty-one senior high students represented as EFL beginners and intermediate readers, respectively. Both of them read consecutively three screens with narrative texts and pictures illustrating the texts. The results showed that both beginners and intermediate readers paid more attention to the texts than the pictures. The beginners almost solely fixated on the texts and few fixations fell on to the pictures while the intermediates had more fixations on both texts and pictures. The eye-movement data in the specific AOIs showed that the intermediates made more references between text and pictures when they encountered difficult words or processed semantic meaning making. The beginners were less efficient in reading, having less fixated time on each screen, and encountered greater difficulties in comprehension than the intermediates. Based on eye-movement data, a personalized strategy to alter display sequence could be provided to support EFL beginners: Before going into narrative reading, a reminding message could be dispatched onscreen guiding them to view standalone pictures and to inspect pictorial components carefully to serve as the macro-reading strategy. The personalization could also be realized by posting cognitive and meta-cognitive level questions during the inspection of picture.