2018 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Utilizing Eye Movement Data to Assess Strategic Competence Across a Range of Reading Task Types in Second Language Learners
| Project/Area Number |
18K00767
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| Research Institution | Kindai University |
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Principal Investigator |
アトキンズ アンドリュー 近畿大学, 国際学部, 准教授 (70513331)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
Prichard Caleb 岡山大学, 全学教育・学生支援機構, 准教授 (10440306)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2018-04-01 – 2021-03-31
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| Keywords | Reading competance / Reading strategies / Eye tracking / Reading Skills / Reading task performance |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
The first year of this project has been rather frustrating in terms of data collection. We purchased a Gazepoint GP3HD eyetracker with the hope that it would be a great improvement over the eyetrackers we already possessed with the view to purchasing a further unit if the tracker was accurate and reliable, however the tracker did not provide the performance we had hoped for. We are still losing a lot of data and this is unacceptable to journals, as well as the accuracy issues mentioned above. We submitted our first research paper to the journal "Reading in a Foreign Language" and it was rejected for a numberof reasons, most of which we have now rectified and the paper has been resubmitted. The problem still remains that for serious research the eyetracker needs to be more reliable.
Prichard and Atkins presented in Thessaloniki, Greece in May 2018 at a teaching conference about our initial research plans and pilot data. The title was "Exploring Selective Attention of L2 Readers through Eye Tracking". The presentation was well attended and received and we obtained some good critical advice about our project from those present. Prichard presented at the International Congress of Linguistics in July 2018 in Cape Town, South Africa. The title was "Global Reading Strategies and Selective Attention". Atkins presented initial findings at a conference Innovation in Language Learning Conference in Florence in November.. The presentation was well received and valuable feedback was obtained.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
3: Progress in research has been slightly delayed.
Reason
Although we are making some progress we have not proceeded as we had hoped. This year we obtained another Kaken grant and with that we will buy a high end machine that can be utilised in both of the projects. This should put us back on schedule. Our current eye trackers do not provide reliable and accurate tracking in poorly lit conditions orif participants have any kind of correction on their eyes. The machine
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
With access to a higher performance eye tracker we are planning to broaden our research project and collect data for a wider range of second language reading tasks. We plan to write at least two research papers using data from both of the convenience samples at our two universities. It is predicted that the research will be finished on schedule and be of a high enough standard to be published in prestigious journals such as Language Learning or TESOL Quarterly.
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| Causes of Carryover |
Due to the eye tracker we purchased being of a lowwer accuracy than we had hoped, we purchsed only one unit instead of the planned 2 units. We plan to use this leftover money together with this year's budget to purchase eye tracking software and part of an eye tracker.
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Research Products
(3 results)
