Click hyperlinks

國

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

usually copy and paste the sentences I can’t understand to ask my friends to tell me. (SG#12)

Method 7: Visualize the reading content

Another method conductive to the participants’ online reading comprehension is to visualize the reading content through the image and video search. Three

participants (6%) mentioned that the use of YouTube and Google Images provided them a bright and specific idea of the meanings of the incomprehensible phrases or words so as to understand the reading content. Two participants discussed over this viewpoint as follows:

P2: I would like to search the unknown phrases or keywords through Google Images, and thus I can better understand what I am reading about by

browsing through its images. After getting the glimpse of these images, then I go to other websites to search for related information and then apply the meanings I get from the images search into what I read so as to see which meaning is suitable to the content I read.

P1: That’s right. I think that after I look up images about the unknown words or sentences extracted from the reading content, I suddenly realize that it is not that hard to understand their meanings. Like last time I googled a keyword extracted from the content out of The Historian. It is a novel about Dracula.

After googling, I realized that this reading passage is really easy to

understand. And this whole passage mainly talks about “sandwich”. (SG#6) The other participant viewed YouTube as another useful resource to help with her further understanding of an unfamiliar topic. This participant stated:

I think YouTube is another good choice. For instance, last time I read an article about the most classic MV, which was claimed to be Michael

Jackson’s “Thriller”. I knew nothing about this MV, so I went to YouTube to watch this MV to get myself familiarized with it. (SG#4-P1)

Method 8: Click hyperlinks

Two students (4%) regarded hyperlinks as another beneficial means leading them to further information of an issue. To them, Yahoo Mini Pen not only provides the definition of query word, but its hyperlinks can guide them to relevant information on other websites as well. Detailed interview concerning this idea is shown below:

‧ 國

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

P3: Right. There is also a profile section [in Yahoo Mini Pen] which can lead you to more information about an issue. For example, if Yahoo Mini Pen shows the result regarding a political group that I have no idea about, I can go to its profile section [another function on Yahoo Mini Pen] to get further

information related to this topic.

P1: Right, it is just like some underlined words that can be linked to other websites or further information.

R: So, do you mean hyperlinks?

P1/P3: Yes. (SG#5)

EFL Undergraduates’ Perceptions of Online English Reading

This section presents the participants’ perceptions of reading English on the Internet in terms of the disadvantage and advantage of reading English online, personal preferences of reading English online or in print, and their suggestions for teachers who intend to incorporate Internet technology into the curriculum. Each respect is analyzed statistically together with the interview excerpts.

Disadvantages of reading English online

Interview Question 7 was asked to find out what types of disadvantages of reading English online the participants there are. To be specific, the question tries to probe into what elements may hinder the participants from reading English through the Internet.

The results of the participants’ views of disadvantages of reading English online are presented in Table 4-16. As seen in the table, there are nine main types of

disadvantages found from the interview data: (1) inflexibility, (2) distraction and disorientation, (3) lack of ergonomic concerns, (4) oversupply of information, (5) lack of reliability, (6) lack of portability and tactile satisfaction, (7) problems from reading materials, (8) failure to read in detail, and (9) unfamiliarity with foreign webpages.

Apart from the main categories of the disadvantage, several subcategories under the certain categories are enumerated to further illustrate the participants’ perceptions.

‧

In Table 4-16, the subtotal number of each main category of disadvantage, highlighted in bold, is the total number of the frequency in reporting some subcategorized disadvantages of reading on the Internet. The participants were allowed to point out more than one main category of online reading disadvantage.

However, even if the participants mentioned the same subcategorized drawback of reading online more than once, the frequency was taken as once. The total number of frequency in all disadvantages was calculated by adding the subtotal number of each main category of disadvantage. As for the percentage of each subcategorized

disadvantage, it was computed by dividing the frequency of each subcategorized disadvantage by the total number of frequency in that certain main category of disadvantage in order to reveal the percentage that each subcategory of disadvantage takes. In addition, the percentage of each main disadvantage was calculated by dividing the subtotal number of frequency of each main category of disadvantage by the total number of frequency in all main categories of disadvantage.

Table 4-16 Disadvantages of Reading English Online

Disadvantage Subcategories N %

1. Incapacity of taking notes and highlighting 33 65 2. Difficulty in relocating the used websites 13 25 Inflexibility 1. Less information absorbed or

transferred to long-term memory 20 50 2. Difficulty in searching for target information 7 17.5 3. Incomplete or disorganized information 7 17.5 Oversupply of

information

4. Failure to give sense of achievement or

inform the reading progress 6 15

‧

tactile satisfaction 2. Lack of tactile satisfaction 9 35 SUBTOTAL 26 (10.8%)

Note. [N] = the number of the responses the participants gave concerning the disadvantage of reading on the Internet.

Among nine kinds of barriers of reading English on the Internet, inflexibility (21.3%) surpasses the other drawbacks, followed by distraction and disorientation (20.0%), oversupply of information (16.7%), lack of ergonomic concerns (15.8%), lack of portability or tactile satisfaction (10.8%), lack of reliability (9.2%), problem from reading materials (2.5%), failure to read in detail (2.5%), and unfamiliarity with foreign webpages (1.3%).

Disadvantage 1: Inflexibility

Fifty-one responses (21.3%) were reported that reading online is not as flexible as reading in print because they are not able to highlight and take notes, have

difficulty relocating the websites they used before, and feel drudgery to flip between screens or scroll windows to read.

Thirty-three respondents highly valued the capacity of taking notes, underlining,