Abstract
Our study contributes to our understanding of Internet reading by Emergent Bilinguals (EB) and Native English speakers (NS) by investigating their recall of two Internet reading passages containing additional information available through either hypertext links or footnotes. Participants included 25 EB and 25 NS college students. Answers to cued recall questions were scored on the basis of the number of correctly recalled propositions (Kintsch, 1998). Additional interpretive data came from semi-structured interviews with four NS and four EB participants. Quantitative results showed that both groups of students recalled significantly more propositions with linear text than with hypertext. However, although descriptive statistics indicated that NS recalled more than EB, this difference did not reach significance. Interview and survey data confirmed that both NS and EB found the footnoted text easier to recall than the version containing hypertext. Interview themes included the impact of unfamiliar vocabulary and contrasting motives for accessing the links.
Recommended Citation
Ebsworth, Miriam Eisenstein and McDonell, Tommy
(2013)
"Native and Emergent Bilingual University-level English Speakers Reading Online: The Influence of Hypertext on Comprehension,"
Journal of Multilingual Education Research: Vol. 4, Article 5.
Available at:
https://research.library.fordham.edu/jmer/vol4/iss1/5
