Treffer: Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Reading Aloud a Program Code in Learning Programming Based on Brain-Activity Measurements

We evaluate the effectiveness of reading aloud a program code in learning programming from a neuroscientific perspective by measuring brain activity using a near-infrared spectroscopy device. The results show that when reading aloud and then reading silently, brain activity increases during reading aloud; a similar trend is observed when the reading order is reversed. In addition, written tests, such as C-language fill-in-the-blank questions, result in higher scores when the participants read aloud than when they read silently. Furthermore, no characteristic differences in brain activity were found between students with good programming skills and those without. Significant differences were found for students with average programming skills. In a future study, we will increase the number of participants to verify the above results and clarify the relation between brain activity and the difficulty level of the program code, reading speed, subvocalization during silent reading, and other factors. Our aim is to establish an efficient learning programming method by employing the reading-aloud technique. [For the full proceedings, see ED665357.]

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