SILENT, ORAL, L1, L2, FRENCH AND ENGLISH READING THROUGH EYE MOVEMENTS AND MISCUES

Abstract

During 24 silent and oral readings of Guy de Maupassant and Arthur C. Clarke short stories (1294 and 1516 words) by proficient multilinguals, movement of the left eye was tracked and utterances were recorded. Three hypotheses investigate universality in the reading process: reading in English is similar in reading speed, miscues, and eye movements to reading in French (chapter 4); reading in a first, or native language (L1), is similar in reading speed, miscues, and eye movements to reading in a second, or later acquired, language (L2) (chapter 5); silent reading is similar to oral reading in reading speed and eye movements (chapter 6). Hypothesis are partially confirmed; implications are drawn for teaching and research.Silent reading is consistently faster than oral reading, with a mean difference of 28.7%. Reading speed is similar in English and French, but interacts differently with language experience: L2 readers of English read 50% slower than L1 readers, while in French, L2 readers read 13% faster.Retelling scores demonstrate a slight comprehension advantage for oral reading over silent, a wider range after oral than after silent, L1 readers having a slight advantage over L2 readers, and improved scores after second readings. Proscribing rereading to increase oral accuracy may disadvantage some readers: Second oral readings in English (but not in French) produced more miscues than first oral readings. This requires further study with tightly controlled groups. Overall, English readings produced 36% more miscues than French readings.Mean fixation durations are slightly longer during silent than oral reading, and show little variation between English and French reading. Wide variation in reading speed (L1/L2, silent/oral) is not reflected in mean eye fixation durations, although language dominance show an effect in French, where fixations during L1 readings are 18.6% shorter than during L2 readings.Individual variation is a factor. Emotional affect, poetic style, construction of syntax, and attention to metaphor are all observed in this EMMA data. Future analysis of this database may look at anaphoric relations, metaphor, how texts teach; and how readers develop narrative, verb phases, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic relations in complete textual discourse.