In recent years interest in L2 reading research has focused largely on word frequency, sentence level, word recognition, and several researchers have begun to use eye tracking to better study reading behaviors. Parshina et al. (under review) have found that high proficiency heritage speakers of Russian read faster in terms of gaze duration and total time and had fewer regressions than low proficiency heritage speakers. The current study focuses on the establishment of benchmarks for L2 Russian readers in terms of first fixation duration, gaze duration, and total time when reading a complete passage, and compares these variables among different proficiency levels. Thirty-two students participated in the study with proficiency levels ranging from Novice to Superior. Subjects completed eye tracking and reading comprehension passages with the use on an eye tracker to asses reading abilities. Results show that all participants read L1 significantly faster than L2 in terms of first fixation duration. Additionally, all proficiency levels read Intermediate passages faster than Advanced passages. These results help establish the first benchmarks for eye tracking in Russian as an L2.

This thesis investigates the second language acquisition of the English article system by Turkish learners in order to find out the role of certain semantic universals of the Universal Grammar during the acquisition process. More specifically, the purpose is to see whether or not L1 Turkish learners of English fluctuate between two semantic notions namely / specificity and definiteness, and the effect of this fluctuation on acquisition. 120 students from three groups of learners at different proficiency levels (40 elementary, 40 intermediate and 40 upper &ndash / intermediate students) were tested. Data collection instrument, a forced-choice elicitation task is used. The task consists of 40 short and contextualized dialogues. The target sentence in each dialogue is missing an article and learners were asked to fill the gap with an appropriate article / a/an, the or &Oslash / on the bases of their understanding of the proceeding context. Dialogues in the task belong to four different contexts / i.e. definite/specific, definite/non-specific, indefinite/specific and indefinite/non-specific. Each context has 10 dialogues with four different contexts that are randomized. Data were analyzed using SPSS 17 packet program (descriptive analysis and one-way ANOVA). The results showed that intermediate level learners exhibited fluctuation between definiteness and specificity to a great extent in (+definite/-specific) and (-definite/+specific) contexts. Elementary level learners were more accurate in these contexts exhibiting article omission errors in definite contexts. Overall, despite certain unexpected results, upper intermediate level students were quite successful in article assignment in defined contexts. This revealed that there is a positive correlation between article system acquisition and proficiency.