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Title Language Comprehensibility Through Digital Hypertext: An Experimental Study of Cognitive Understanding

Author(s) Mudassar Mahmood Ahmed

Abstract This qualitative and interdisciplinary study experiments with the emerging digital hypertexts, composed in multimodal/ multisequential representational forms in order to understand the intricacies of cognitive processing of content language. This research attempts to find out how this phenomenon is connected to language, how digital text better facilitates meaning making and understanding, and also facilitates the use of language for communicating that meaning and understanding. Hence, also to evaluate how it brings comprehension competence through language in the reading of digital hypertexts. Since understanding the digital language of hypertexts is a new phenomenon in the Pakistani educational context, therefore the present study attempts to explore the relevant, intricate cognitive patterns as the non-native readers navigate through the interactive hyperlinked language for meaning making. Thus, the focus is on understanding the process rather than the product. For this purpose, qualitative approach and methods were applied in three phases. Participants from the postgraduate classes of English department were engaged and data responses were collected. The study reveals that the participants exhibited many (meta) cognitive categories and informs that interaction with digital language representation enhances the meaning making experience of the non-native readers. The participants employed new reading strategies unlike the ones used for comprehending traditional sequential printed text. The study reveals that the medium has a great impact on the understanding process of the language readers, and that a different representational medium might facilitate or discourage the meaningful interaction with language. It is concluded that the participants favor the use of multimodal digital hypertext for its positive impact on understanding and use of communicative language. Thus, the study highlights new openings for meaning making using digital language of multisequential/multimodal hypertext composed in a new environment.

Type Thesis/Dissertation PhD

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Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2014-01-01

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