Аннотация:The study is an insight into the eye‐movement patterns of language learners at different levels
of mastery. Extended research into eye‐movement patterns as connected to cognitive strategies in
various tasks (Velichkovsky et al., 2005; Blinnikova et al., 2016) demonstrates that oculomotor correlates can indicate the characteristics of information processing (Rayner, 2009). Thus, the registration of eye‐movement patterns while performing verbal search tasks reveals the peculiarities of cognitive strategies used by ESL (English as a Second Language) students at different levels of linguistic competence.
The hypothesis of the study is that a foreign language mastery level influences the cognitive
strategies and oculomotor patterns applied by respondents in a verbal search task. This variation in
strategy choices can be widely used as a marker of linguistic competence in a range of situations connected with education, especially with student assessment.
The experimental task included visual search for English words in letter matrices (15 x 15) with
motor response (mouse clicks on the first and the last letter in the word found). The target stimuli
were either horizontally or vertically oriented in equal proportion. Word frequency, length, and emotional valence were under control in the experiment. Respondents looked for words in 9 matrices, presented on the screen for 40 seconds each. Participants (45 people aged 18 to 33) were divided into three groups according to their English language mastery (as evaluated by self‐report and Word Associates Test aimed at verbal competence in English). Subjects’ eye movements were recorded with an SMI RED 250 system. Mean comparison was applied to analyse the statistical data. The received data indicate that oculomotor patterns and visual search strategies differ significantly in the three groups of respondents. With all the participants reporting great cognitive strain to perform the task, A2 CEFR level students (group 1) demonstrate longer fixations and shorter saccades as compared to C1 students (group 3). The intermediary position of group 2 results (B1‐B2 CEFR levels) support the hypothesis of gradual transition from focal to ambient strategies with the increase of language mastery