Increasing numbers of international students enter university education via English language bridging programs. Much research has overlooked the nature of second language reading development during a bridging program, focusing instead on the development of literacy skills of international students who already meet the language requirement for undergraduate admission. We report a longitudinal eye-movement study assessing English passage reading efficiency and comprehension in 405 Chinese-speaking bridging program students. Incoming IELTS reading scores were used as an index of baseline reading ability. Linear mixed-effects regression models fitted to global eye-movement measures and reading comprehension indicated that despite initial between-subjects differences, within-subject change at each ability level progressed at the same rate, following parallel growth trajectories. Therefore, there was significant overall reading progress during the bridging program, but no evidence that the gap between low and high ability readers either closed or widened over time.

越来越多的国际学生通过英语语言衔接课程进入大学接受教育。许多研究忽视了衔接课程期间第二语言阅读发展的本质，而是关注已经达到本科入学语言要求的国际学生的读写能力发展。我们报告了一项纵向眼动研究，评估 405 名讲中文的衔接课程学生的英语文章阅读效率和理解力。雅思阅读成绩被用作基线阅读能力的指标。适合全局眼动测量和阅读理解的线性混合效应回归模型表明，尽管最初受试者之间存在差异，但每个能力水平的受试者内部变化以相同的速度进步，遵循平行的增长轨迹。因此，在衔接计划期间整体阅读进步显着，但没有证据表明低能力和高能力读者之间的差距随着时间的推移缩小或扩大。