When Do Foreign‐Language Readers Look Up the Meaning of Unfamiliar Words? The Influence of Task and Learner Variables

to help us gain an overview and an understanding of the pertinent issues in the field (3; 4; 13; 17; 25; 26). When we look at these reviews from the perspective of the methodologies used in relation to the questions asked, what strikes us is the focus on the product of reading and the lack of attention to the process of reading. Most studies use methods by which the product of reading is elicited: readers are asked to answer comprehension questions, to fill in omitted words (cloze procedure), or to reproduce the text contents (recall). Some years ago, Gupta and McLaughlin argued that the static orientation towards reading in these studies needs to be complemented with a more dynamic orientation. Some studies have attempted to do so by investigating the reading process. First of all, some off-line measures have been used, such as the administration of questionnaires eliciting self-reported strategy use (2; 22). Furthermore, we are witnessing an increasing interest in the use of on-line measures, such as the observation of eye movements (5; 21), the measurement of word reading times and sentence reading times (24), the recording of reading aloud behavior (11; 18), and the recording of thinking aloud during reading (1; 7; 8). As has been pointed out by Segalowitz et al., processing research is pertinent first of all to fundamental theoretical issues in the study of FL reading processes. However, processing research is potentially important for FL instruction as well. In particular, it may give us a deeper understanding of which strategies FL readers use in order to reach their reading goal. The present study contributes to FL reading research both on the level of methodology and on the level of understanding reading strategies. The methodological purpose of our study was o explore the possibilities of using computers for the unobtrusive observation of one aspect of FL reading behavior, namely looking up the meaning of unfamiliar words encountered while reading a FL text. (For a similar computer aided exploration of FL writing behavior, see 6.) The text which the subjects in this study read was available not only on paper but also on the screen of a personal computer. If readers wanted to know the meaning of a difficult word in the text, they moved the cursor to the desired word and pressed the Enter key. A window opened showing the word's translation in the subjects' first language. Pressing the Enter key again made the window disappear. The computer registered subjects' look-up actions by composing log files. Subjects were not told in advance that the computer registered their actions. Nor could they be aware of this since it was done invisibly and inaudibly for them. Some years ago, Pugh and Ulijn called for the use of realistic tasks in FL reading research, rejecting the use of highly artificial procedures The Modern Language Journal, 77, ii (1993) 0026-7902/93/139-47 $1.50/0 ? 1993 The Modern Language Journal