A reading model of young EFL learners regarding attention, cognitive-load and auditory-assistance

Abstract

Audio-assisted reading (reading-while-listening) was commonly used as a pedagogical method in English (L2) learning. Numerous studies had reported its efficacy in English (L2) reading. Its efficacy in reading comprehension has been inconclusive due to the lack of studies on the relationship among attention, cognitive load and L2 reading comprehension, with the possibility that the synchronous auditory input lessens attention to the visual input. We present a study of 41 Mandarin-speaking 8-year-old children reading English texts in three modes in a between-participants design. Data of cognitive load, comprehension scores and attention were fitted to a formal mathematical model, which confirmed that influences on L2 reading comprehension could be captured by interactions between attention and cognitive load. Based on the findings, three implications regarding how to appropriately apply auditory-assistant tools to L2 reading were generated.

Keywords:

• Attention
• audio-assisted reading (reading-while-listening)
• cognitive load
• English as foreign language (EFL) learning
• second language (L2)

Notes

1 Despite “effort” was originally defined as the physical movement of the human which inhibited scanning in the SEEV model (Horrey et al., 2006), many other studies (e.g.,Gollan & Ferscha, 2016) re-interpreted it as the participants’ effort to attend or engage in a particular task.

2 The estimation of the attention effort value $e_k^{\mathrm{\text{'}}}$ could be got by invoking griddata (“v4”) method in matlab.

3 Speed readings for ESL learners is a reading fluency training program contains the method of testing readers’ reading fluency. Speed readings for ESL learners includes a serials of reading contexts to adapt to EFL learners’ different word size. Speed readings for ESL learners serial is developed by School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Victoria University of Wellington. Take Speed readings for ESL learners: 500 BNC for instance, this program is designed for kids and contains twenty 300-word passages, each with eight comprehension questions. The passages are written within the British National Corpus 500 (BNC 500) most frequently used words of English. Accuracy in answering the questions is not the main consideration. The fastest time with about 70% accuracy is defined as the least time that a reader is required on reading a 300-words passage. Therefore, student’s current reading fluency rate, i.e., the wpm, can be calculated by “300/fastest time with about 70% accuracy (minutes).” More details about how to conduct such a reading fluency test can be found in https://www.victoria.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/1754457/500-BNC-SRs-for-ESL-Learners.pdf.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan Province (2018JY0312) and the Social Science Foundation of Sichuan Province (2021A022).