GERMAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN HIGH SCHOOLS: STUDENTS’ READING MODES AND COMPREHENSION OF VIRTUAL TEXTS

The purpose of this paper is to present results derived from the experience conducted in the CIBERTAAAL project. This project was undertaken by four Spanish Universities and their students.

In this project we have analyzed students’ strategies when reading German webs and using available information in order to complete different reading tasks.

Different tools were used to get the data for the reading and comprehension experiment: a computing program that registered the students’ reading and navigation modes, their reading time, tests to assess the students’ learning styles and linguistic competence and students’ self-evaluation tests after performing the task.

The reading modes that language learners activate when working on the web are reading, browsing and navigating.

The analysis of the students’ data has allowed us to establish possible correlation among students’ linguistic competence, their learning styles, their level in foreign language, their reading modes and their ability to handle ICT. These results will be used to derive conclusions on a tentative relation between ‘usefull’ reading modes and improving comprehension of virtual texts in foreign languages.