Students in academic contexts are expected to engage with large amounts of reading and they frequently meet unknown words and phrases in those reading materials. Previous research has shown that second and foreign language learners can acquire some of the unknown vocabulary that they encounter during reading. However, these previous findings were mainly based on scores in off-line, post-reading tests and thus, our understanding of the cognitive processes involved during learning from reading has been rather limited. Technological advancements have made it easier for researchers to explore learners’ online processing behaviour. One of such advancements is eye-tracking, which provides a rich record of online reading behaviour. The last decade has witnessed an unprecedented increase in the number of eye-tracking studies conducted in second/foreign language learning research, with a particular focus on vocabulary learning from reading. This article illustrates how the use of eye-tracking has helped researchers gain a better understanding of the process of vocabulary learning from reading and of the relationship between eye-movements and performance measures. This article discusses recent research findings and identifies directions for future research.

中文翻译：

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通过阅读扩展英语词汇知识：眼动追踪研究的见解

学术环境中的学生需要进行大量阅读，他们经常在这些阅读材料中遇到未知的单词和短语。先前的研究表明，第二语言和外语学习者可以习得一些他们在阅读过程中遇到的未知词汇。然而，这些先前的发现主要基于离线、阅读后测试的分数，因此，我们对阅读学习过程中所涉及的认知过程的理解相当有限。技术进步使研究人员更容易探索学习者的在线处理行为。其中一项进步是眼动追踪，它提供了丰富的在线阅读行为记录。在过去的十年中，在第二语言/外语学习研究中进行的眼动追踪研究数量空前增加，特别关注从阅读中学习词汇。本文说明了眼动追踪的使用如何帮助研究人员更好地了解从阅读中学习词汇的过程以及眼动与表现测量之间的关系。本文讨论了最近的研究结果，并确定了未来研究的方向。