Influence of Road Traffic Noise on English Reading Comprehension of Chinese College Students Majoring in English

Authors

  • Wei Ding Heilongjiang Bayi Agricultural University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v15i14.15355

Abstract


Noise has a negative impact on language learning. But first and second lan-guages are affected differently by noise. To clarify the effects of road traffic noise on second language learning, this study explores deep into how road traffic noise, the main noise on university campuses, affects the English reading comprehension of Chinese college students majoring in English. The subjects were asked to finish English reading comprehension tests of three difficulty levels (easy, medium and hard) under road traffic noises of three sound pressure levels (SPLs), namely, 30 dBA, 50 dBA and 70 dBA. The score, time consumption and number of interruptions of each subject were recorded, and subjected to one-way analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA). In addition, the subjects were asked to evaluate the impacts of road traffic noises on their comprehension. The results show that: the scores of English reading comprehension gradually decreased with the growing of the SPL of road traffic noise, but the decrease is only significant for easy questions; the time consumption of reading comprehension was not greatly affected by the SPL of road traffic noise; the subjects were interrupted more frequently by road traffic noises of 50 dBA and 70 dBA than road traffic noise of 30 dBA, but the difference is only significant for hard test; according to the self-evaluation of the English majors, interruption is the main problem brought by road traffic noise, which is replaced by distraction at the SPL of 70 dBA. Overall, the road traffic noise can disturb the English reading comprehension of Chinese college students majoring in English, and the disturbance is relat-ed to the difficulty of the text. The higher the SPL of the road traffic noise, the readers are more anxious and more frequently disturbed in reading, and the lower the score of English comprehension. In addition, attention should be paid to the disturbance of 30 dBA road traffic noise on second language learners.

Author Biography

Wei Ding, Heilongjiang Bayi Agricultural University

Wei Ding is a lecturer in Department of English, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Heilongjiang Bayi Agricultural University. She is interested in English education and British literature. Email: dingwei0508@gmail.com

Downloads

Published

2020-07-31

How to Cite

Ding, W. (2020). Influence of Road Traffic Noise on English Reading Comprehension of Chinese College Students Majoring in English. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET), 15(14), pp. 109–121. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v15i14.15355

Issue

Vol. 15 No. 14 (2020)

Section

Papers

License

The submitting author warrants that the submission is original and that she/he is the author of the submission together with the named co-authors; to the extend the submission incorporates text passages, figures, data or other material from the work of others, the submitting author has obtained any necessary permission.
Articles in this journal are published under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC-BY What does this mean?). This is to get more legal certainty about what readers can do with published articles, and thus a wider dissemination and archiving, which in turn makes publishing with this journal more valuable for you, the authors.
By submitting an article the author grants to this journal the non-exclusive right to publish it. The author retains the copyright and the publishing rights for his article without any restrictions.