An investigation into pronoun resolution of Turkish learners of English by eye-tracking technique

Although the pronoun resolution process has been investigated in L1, there are limited numbers of studies investigating L2 pronoun resolution with reference to the EFL reading comprehension process. Pronoun resolution has engaged significant attention of linguists for the last few decades, and most of the research has been done in the interpretations of reflexives, emphatically in English. However, the interpretation of pronouns has received less attention than that of reflexives (Kweon, 2011). Therefore, this study aims to meet the general need for a study to scrutinize the pronoun resolution mechanism in EFL learners with comparison to native English speakers. More specifically, the purpose of this study is to investigate first and total fixation times of pronouns in native English speakers and Turkish EFL speakers by using an eye tracking device, to specify the correlation between first and total fixation times of pronouns and perceived difficulty levels determined by participants, and finally, to disclose participants' personal comments regarding the cause of difficulty in pronoun resolution. For these purposes, both qualitative and quantitative data have been collected through various tools, such as eye-tracking recordings, matching pronouns with referents, and personal comments of participants during eye-tracking sessions. In the experiments, native English speakers and EFL learners have been asked to do a reading task as their eye movements were recorded with an eye-tracking computer set-up. In the reading task, they were asked to read statements and then match the pronoun with its referent and rate the difficulty. Meanwhile, during the eye-tracking session, participants were required to comment on their pronoun resolution preferences, difficulty of understanding, and resolving of the pronoun. The findings of Turkish EFL learners have been compared to those of the native English speaking control group. The MANOVA results suggested that there was not a statistically significant difference between the first fixation times of parallel function pronoun resolution (PFR) and non- parallel function pronoun resolution (non-PFR) in native English and Turkish EFL speakers; however, another MANOVA revealed a statistically significant difference between total fixation times of PFR and non-PFR pronoun resolution in native English and Turkish EFL speakers. Paired samples t-test results have revealed a statistically significant difference between the total fixation times of PFR and non- PFR pronoun resolution in native English speaking and Turkish EFL speaking participants. The results suggested that participants fixated significantly longer on non- PFR pronouns than on PFR pronouns. Additionally, we investigated a probable correlation between mean fixation times and personal difficulty of understanding (PDU) scores. To that end, a Pearson product moment correlation analysis conducted to find out if there is a relationship between mean first fixation times, mean total fixation times and mean PDU scores. The results suggested a positive and statistically significant correlation between the mean total fixation times and mean PDU scores. Finally, the personal comments of the participants revealed two themes underlying the difficulty of understanding: namely, lexical accounts and grammatical accounts for pronoun resolution. Keywords: English language teaching, linguistics, pronoun resolution.