The Social Situational Awareness of Japanese Learners of English as a Foreign Language

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During the research stage for the academic year 2021-2022, the initial pilot-testing phase revealed issues with the use of the screen-based eye-tracking software. The issue related to the use of a paper-based component of the assessment, which resulted in participants waffling between the monitor, where their eye patterns were tracked, and the response sheet. This resulted in calibration issues. To resolve this, in the academic year 2022-2023, I redesigned all of the item prompts so that the original paper-based portions of the video-based pragmatic assessment were manipulated digitally and added to the screen-based version. This allowed for all aspects of the assessment to be part of the stimuli captured by eye-tracking software. I have accomplished these fixes and further pilot testing has revealed that participants no longer waffle their eye movements during the data collection procedures. Now, rather than writing item responses on a separate piece of paper, participants vocalize their choices aloud and are audio-recorded. This data, along with researcher notes, are added to the data captured by the eye-tracker. Research so far suggests that learners attend to speakers’ facial expressions and gestures presented on screen in a fashion similar to how individuals attend to real-world communication behaviors. This preliminary finding supports calls researchers have made for increased use of authentic resources in both second language instruction and assessment.