In this study, I investigated the effects of simultaneous listening and reading on visual information processing, text comprehension, and memory performance of Chinese participants on an advanced level of German as a foreign language (L2) when reading German literary texts. Two conditions were compared: reading (R) and simultaneous listening and reading (LR). I used a binocular eye tracker to measure the eye movement parameters (i.e., reading time, number of fixations, fixation durations, and saccade durations) in both conditions with Chinese native speakers as an experimental group and German native speakers as a control group. Two questionnaires were designed to test the participants' memory performance and additionally, participants were interviewed after the experiment to gather subjective impressions on text comprehension. I found that, in comparison to the LR condition, faster reading by L2 learners in the R condition was not equal to a better L2 reading comprehension and only L2 learners with an advanced L2 knowledge benefited from LR. The analysis of eye movements indicated that the auditory input had different effects on the reading behaviour of Chinese and German readers.
The analyses of the questionnaires did not yield any differences in recall between the two groups, leading to the conclusion that the auditory input had no influence on memory performance of the participants in this experiment.