An Exploratory Study Using Eye-tracking to Analyze Korean English Learners' Reading Behavior

Abstract

This study aims to analyze Korean English reading behavior when reading English texts using a new method, eye-tracking, focusing on the differences between global and analytic readers. Few studies have examined whether Korean English learners are well aware of their reading behavior; thus, a questionnaire measuring their English language learning styles was first used to find out their preferences as English learners. Then, an eye-tracker was used to examine their eye movements when reading three different English texts. Five volunteers with high English proficiency participated in this study. The participants described what they usually do when reading English texts and took the questionnaire to measure English learning styles. The results showed that there were three global (focusing on the main ideas) and two analytic (focusing on the details) learners. Interestingly, the analytic learners took more reading time when reading a text that has a topic sentence at the beginning than at the last, compared to the global learners. In addition, their eyes returned back more often than the global learners when reading a more difficult text than an easy one. Detailed results and discussions are presented.