The Effect Of Gender And English Proficiency On English Sentence Reading:Evidence From Eye Movements

Current foreign language teaching attaches more and more importance to the students and their status in learning activities,and the factors relevant to learning efficiency have received more attention as well as.As an important factor affecting individual learning,gender differences have been extensively studied.Previous research results show that there are gender differences in language learning and females’ language proficiency is better than males’.At the same time,language learning is closely related to the language proficiency of the learner.Although previous studies have investigated the independent effects of these two factors,few studies have combined these two factors together so as to explore the interaction between gender and English proficiency.Therefore,the present study tried to investigate the interactive effects of English proficiency(high-level and low-level)and gender(male and female)on English sentence reading through eye movements research.The study mainly addressed the following three questions:First,does gender have main effect on the processing of English sentence reading and what are the differences in relevant eye movement indicators?Second,does English proficiency have main effect on the processing of English sentence reading and what are the differences in relevant eye movement indicators?Third,is there an interaction between gender and English proficiency when reading English sentences?In this experiment,subjects included 16 high school students from a middle school and 16 freshmen from a university in Fuzhou City.Reading materials were attributive clauses selected from the English Test of College Entrance Examination.A 2(gender)×2(English proficiency)mixed design was made and a mixed factorial Analysis of Variance(ANOVA)was conducted.Eye-Link 1000 was used to collect data of their reading performance and various eye movement indicators.The results showed that:Firstly,gender influenced English sentence reading and the significant main effect was observed.When processing English sentences,females were more attentive and concentrated with a better attention stability.Males had broader vision with larger attention breadth.Secondly,there was significant main effect of English proficiency on the processing of English sentence reading.It indicated that subjects with high English level could better understand and process English sentences than those with low English level.Thirdly,there was significant interaction between gender and English proficiency.The effect of gender had different influences at different English levels due to the different attention distribution between males and females.Through this research,the effect of learners’ gender and English proficiency was analyzed and some suggestions were provided for English teaching in middle schools so as to make a supplement to the related studies and attach more importance to the individual differences of the students in teaching activities.Students with different English proficiency and gender should be cultivated with different English teaching method according to their aptitude,which can be more conducive to their development.