| Popis: |
Students at university-level in English-speaking countries are increasingly reading from screens for academic purpose. The existing literature suggests that reading on paper is more advantageous than screen for longer texts. However, little attention has been paid to the students who use English as a second language. Also, the emerging evidence regarding the potential negative effects of reading from screen is based on assessments that generally assume reading comprehension to be a global construct rather than being comprised of more complex architecture. Therefore, this study examined whether reading comprehension is more effective following reading on screen or reading on paper using a novel reading comprehension framework – the hybrid framework of Reading Comprehension Assessment – and how any differences related to students’ language background. Participants were 120 business undergraduates randomly assigned to screen-reading (n = 60) or paper-reading (n = 60) groups. Each group consisted of 30 L1-English and 30 L1-Chinese students. The screen-reading group read an expository text on a laptop whilst the paper-reading group read the same text in traditional paper format. Participants were then asked to complete 42 open-ended literal-meaning and inferential-meaning comprehension questions in total. We found that reading medium had a statistically significant effect on comprehension performance, with participants achieving higher scores after reading on paper than reading on screen. L1-English speakers performed better than L1-Chinese speakers on both reading medium. However, whilst higher scores were obtained in the paper-reading condition than in the screen-reading condition for the inferential-meaning questions, no such difference was apparent for the literal-meaning questions. These results suggest that reading on paper may promote deeper comprehension for longer text in academic reading despite students’ first language status. This study provides important pedagogical implications for education practitioners but also proposes a new framework of RCA for future research. |
