Abstract
Internationalization policies at higher educational institutions in non-English speaking countries have led to an increase in multilingual programs for (international) students. Teaching in such programs often requires the use of multiple languages on educational slides (e.g., PowerPoint), with the same information in English and the local language(s). However, having multiple languages on educational slides can lead to text crowding and processing overload. To investigate how students perceive multilingual slides, we performed two experiments with Indonesian and Japanese students, who use English as their second language. They were asked to evaluate slides which contained text in three languages (English, Japanese, and Bahasa Indonesia), within two layouts (separated-block and mixed). While doing so, their visual attention distribution on the slides was assessed with eye tracking, and their comprehension of the contents was tested. The eye-tracking results showed that the students dwelled their eye gaze longer on the texts in their native language (either Bahasa Indonesia or Japanese) if the slides had a separated-block layout, i.e., when the same information was grouped according to language. For slides with a mixed layout, in which the same information was given line-by-line in a different language, the students dwelled mainly on the text in their non-native language(s). Furthermore, these mixed-layout slides were evaluated as more complex/distracting and required more mental processing effort than slides with a separated-block layout. Nevertheless, the students’ content comprehension was significantly better for mixed-layout slides, implying that the mixed layout can be more effective in multilingual education.
Author Information
Laksmira K. Adhani, Kyushu University, Japan
Gerard B. Remijn, Kyushu University, Japan
Paper Information
Conference: ECE2024
Stream: International Education
This paper is part of the ECE2024 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Adhani L., & Remijn G. (2024) Students’ Visual Attention Distribution on Multilingual Educational Slides – An Eye-Tracking Study ISSN: 2188-1162 The European Conference on Education 2024: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 1059-1065) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2188-1162.2024.82
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2188-1162.2024.82
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