FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING IN ICT CONTEXTS: A STUDY OF LEARNING STYLES AND READING MODES IN ENGLISH, FRENCH AND GERMAN

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 analysed students’ cognitive and pragmatic strategies when reading English, French and 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 correlations among students’ linguistic competence, their reading modes, their learning styles, their level in foreign language and their ability to handle ICT. These results will be used to derive conclusions on a tentative relation between ‘useful’ reading modes and improving comprehension of virtual texts in foreign languages.