[PS-1.21] English Language Proficiency Estimation in Students: Eye-Tracking Experiment Model and Data

Serova, M. 1 , Polevaia, A. 1 & Polevaia, S. 2, 1

1 N.I.Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
2 Nizhny Novgorod State Medical Academy, Russia

The article describes Eye Tracking (ET) assessment of the effect of language proficiency on text comprehension. ET was recorded in working with 18 tasks by 23 Russian students, of which 10 pursue a degree in psychology, 13 in English language. 9 of the stimuli were selected from 25 questions of ?est General English of Cambridge University which is a standard test for English proficiency assessment. 9 stimuli were chosen from 24 tasks of the Unified State Exam on Russian language. Significant ET differences were found for the variables of language proficiency: saccade amplitude, fixation duration, and pupil diameter reflect subjective difficulty of cognitive linguistic tasks. On basis of the research, the expert system has been developed, which allows to determine whether the subject has a linguistic education or not, with sensitivity equal to 1, specificity 0.9. The advantage of using such a system to linguistic texts may be the fact that ET data helps to determine the language competence.
Partially supported by Russian Foundation for Humanities (project no. 15-06-10894_a).