The Effects of Text Structure on learners’ reading: A multimodal Perspective from eye-tracking
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- Second Languages are acquired through exposure to comprehensible input, which is slightly beyond learners’ current competence.
- Input can be oral or written.
- Comprehensible Written Input refers to a text that learners can understand even if they are not familiar with all the words and structures in it.
- Written texts have traditionally been verbal in nature, i.e. mostly composed of words, linear, read from left to write, etc.
- With the development of computer-based technologies, texts have undergone significant shifts (placed in interaction with other modes of communication in ways unheard of.)
- These texts, even their linguistic part alone, cannot be comprehended without a clear idea of how the other modes are contributing to the meaning of the text.
- The new text formats challenge the adequacy of traditional linguistic frameworks for their analysis.
- The rise of these formats necessitates a reevaluation of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) reading theories rooted in a linguistic view of texts.
- To examine texts whose compositional elements fall beyond language bounds, a multimodal framework was deemed suitable as it is a multidisciplinary enterprise that accounts for meaning in all its forms.
- Multimodality recognizes that meanings in different modes (script, images, diagrams, color, layout, etc.) are interconnected within a text.
- Texts mixing linguistic and non-linguistic modes may benefit learners by offsetting challenges like limited writing system knowledge, vocabulary, grammar familiarity, and reading strategies.
- These new textual formats offer new research avenues in SLA as they prompt a reevaluation of existing theories.
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- ARKTESOL
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- Fall 2023