Text reading in English as a second language: Evidence from the Multilingual Eye-Movements Corpus

Abstract

Research into second language (L2) reading is an exponentially growing field. Yet, it still has a relatively short supply of comparable, ecologically valid data from readers representing a variety of first languages (L1). This article addresses this need by presenting a new data resource called MECO L2 (Multilingual Eye Movements Corpus), a rich behavioral eye-tracking record of text reading in English as an L2 among 543 university student speakers of 12 different L1s. MECO L2 includes a test battery of component skills of reading and allows for a comparison of the participants’ reading performance in their L1 and L2. This data resource enables innovative large-scale cross-sample analyses of predictors of L2 reading fluency and comprehension. We first introduce the design and structure of the MECO L2 resource, along with reliability estimates and basic descriptive analyses. Then, we illustrate the utility of MECO L2 by quantifying contributions of four sources to variability in L2 reading proficiency proposed in prior literature: reading fluency and comprehension in L1, proficiency in L2 component skills of reading, extralinguistic factors, and the L1 of the readers. Major findings included (a) a fundamental contrast between the determinants of L2 reading fluency versus comprehension accuracy, and (b) high within-participant consistency in the real-time strategy of reading in L1 and L2. We conclude by reviewing the implications of these findings to theories of L2 acquisition and outline further directions in which the new data resource may support L2 reading research.

Quantifying the Difference in Reading Fluency Between L1 and L2 Readers of English

“…The quality of L2 reading comprehension in an individual is co-determined by her “L1 literacy,” “L2 language knowledge,” and “unexplained variance”: see Bernhardt (2011) and Brevik et al (2016), among others. L1 literacy refers to the individual proficiency in reading comprehension and component skills in one’s first language, which serve as the foundation for additional abilities to develop including L2 acquisition (Geva & Wang, 2001; Kuperman et al, 2020). L2 language knowledge refers to the proficiency in L2 component skills (discussed in detail below).…”

Effects of year of post‐secondary study on reading skills for L1 and L2 speakers of English

“…L2 students given extra time on such tests perform equally well as L1 speakers (Miller, 2014). Additionally, Dutch-speaking university students show the same reading comprehension levels in their L1 and English as L2 in memory recognition tests based on short pieces of expository prose, both immediately and after a delay (Dirix et al, 2020;Vander Beken et al, 2020;; see also Kuperman et al, 2021, for L1/L2 English reading comprehension).…”

“…This L1-L2 gap has been identified for virtually all component skills of reading (see meta-analyses and systematic reviews by Bernhardt & Kamil, 1995;Brevik et al, 2016;Jeon & Yamashita, 2014;Lee & Schallert, 1997;Yamashita & Shiotsu, 2017;and an 11-language comparison in Kuperman et al, 2021). It is also well established that L2 reading fluency is generally slower and more effortful (Godfroid et al, 2015;Kuperman et al, 2021;Whitford et al, 2016). A surprisingly robust finding is that proficient L2 readers do not systematically fall behind L1 peers in reading comprehension tests.…”

“…First, most meta-analytical estimates and predictions of the existing literature concern reading comprehension rather than fluency. Second, our data collection method did not provide reliable estimates of processing times necessary for assessing fluency (for related studies, see Godfroid, 2020;Kuperman et al, 2021;Nisbet et al, 2021).…”

The Copenhagen Corpus of Eye Tracking Recordings from Natural Reading of Danish Texts

“…Some of these are again smaller and focus on individual sentence processing: Husain et al (2015) for Hindi, Safavi et al (2016) for Persian, Laurinavichyute et al (2019) for Russian, and Pan et al (2021) for Chinese. The most recent release is the Multilingual Eye Movement Corpus (MECO; (Kuperman et al, 2022;Siegelman et al, 2022)), a resource that includes parallel data from 580 readers in 13 different languages, reading in their native language as well as in English, following the same experiment protocol. However, this corpus does not include Danish.…”