A Study On The Cognitive Process Of The Interactive Reading Model And Its Validation

The main focus of the present doctoral dissertation is placed on two aspects, that is,exploring the cognitive process of the interactive reading model and conducting anempirical study on the validation of this model. The former is intended to reveal thecognitive standpoints of language reading and the interactive properties of processingreading information, and also review the previous studies on the bottom-up reading model,the top-down reading model and the interactive reading model. The latter is aimed atprobing into such topics as the advantages and disadvantages of, the students’ usage degreeof, and the validation of the bottom-up reading model, the top-down reading model and theinteractive reading model.This dissertation provides an overview of the previous theoretical studies on therelevant reading models, and by means of the interviews, the questionnaires and theexperiments, explores the pros and cons of, the students’ usage degrees of and thevalidation of these reading models. The researcher of this dissertation designs the interviewquestions, the questionnaires and the experimental operating procedures in accordancewith the cognitive features of such language components as words, sentences anddiscourses as well as the characteristics of three types of reading teaching models, threetypes of reading models and three types of reading processing strategies. The subjectsparticipating in this project are teachers and students from Shanghai Open University orfrom some of the higher education institutions inside or outside Shanghai. The interviewsand the questionnaires help to identify the subjects’ evaluations of various reading modelsor reading teaching models as well as the correlation between the subjects’ readingproficiency and their usage degrees of various models. The experiments help to test thevalidation of the bottom-up, top-down and interactive model of reading, reading teachingand reading processing strategies. The researcher of this study sorts out and analyzes thedata obtained via various means, by employing a variety of statistical methods or tools,including such descriptive statistics as mean calculation and standard deviation calculationas well as such inferential statistics as T-test, Anova and Pearson correlation test. This dissertation consists of seven chapters. Chapter One is the introduction of thisproject, starting with a description of the history and status quo of reading research, andthen proceeding to probe into the reading problems and the importance of researching theinterative reading model. Chapter Two discusses the cognitive standpoints of languagereading, covering the cognitive connotation of reading, the physiological and psychologicalbasis of reading as well as such cognitive reading domains like orthographic identification,phonological decoding, word recognition, sentence comprehension and discoursecomprehension. Chapter Three first interprets such concepts as reading information andreading memory, then studies the methods of processing reading information, with adetailed exploration of the serial and parallel processing of reading information, of the flowpath of processing reading information, and ends with an analysis of the interactivity of theprocessing of reading information. Chapter Four deals with the reading models andreading strategies, reviewing and exploring the previous theoretical and practical studies onthe bottom-up reading models, the top-down reading models and interactive readingmodels as well as the relevant strategies of processing reading. Chapter Five elaborates onthe methodology employed in this empirical study, mainly concerned with the populationsand sampling procedures, instruments and measurements, research procedures, andmethods of data collection and processing. Chapter Six deals with the collection, statistics,and analysis of the data the author of this dissertation can lay his hands on in the interviews,questionnaires and experiments. Chapter Seven draws the conclusion, which is followed bysome strategies put forward to enhance the L2learners’ proficiency of language reading,and points out some weaknesses of this dissertation as well as some suggestions for furtherrelevant studies.The interviews help to find out that the bottom-up reading model and the top-downreading model have their own advantages and disadvantages, and the interactive readingmodel takes full advantage of the strengths of the bottom-up or top-down reading modelsand overcomes their relevant weaknesses, not only helping the learners to grasp the gist ofthe reading materials but also enabling them to grasp the important details of the articles,not only helping the learners acquire the language knowledge but also enabling them toacquire the relevant cultural background knowledge, not only being suitable for the primary language learners but also for the advanced language learners, not onlyovercoming the mechanical monotony of using the bottom-up reading model but alsobringing into play the advantages the top-down reading model possesses to enhance thelearners’ enthusiasm and initiative of language reading, while overcoming the problems ofslow speed of and low efficiency of reading caused by using the bottom-up reading modeland the problems that the learners who use the top-down reading model are liable to readtoo fast and thus misinterpret the reading materials. The interviews also help to find outthat the majority of the university teachers and students prefer to use the interactive readingmodel in the process of foreign language teaching or reading.The questionnaires help to draw the conclusions that the learners’ reading proficiencyof the English language is positively correlated to the degree of their using the top-downreading model, negatively correlated to the degree of their using the bottom-up readingmodel, and not positively or negatively correlated to the degree of their using theinteractive reading model, and that, no matter how high the students’ reading proficiencyof the English language is, they use the interactive reading model far more frequently thanthe bottom-up reading model or the top-down reading model.The experiments also help to draw the conclusions that, for the students with similarreading proficiency, the interactive reading model is significantly more effective than thebottom-up reading model or the top-down reading model in enhancing their readingproficiency, that is, the former enjoying significantly higher application validation than thelatter two.The fact that the interactive reading model, compared with the bottom-up readingmodel or the top-down reading model, possesses obvious superiority, significantly higherusage degree and validation, is due to its being in accordance with the cognitive process oflanguage reading comprehension. The bottom-up reading and the top-down reading aretwo essential components of the cognitive reading, but the mere top-down reading or themere bottom-up reading only provides the readers with one-way transmission of readinginformation, each representing one of two aspects in the process of the cognitive reading,thus making it difficult for the learners to achieve a completely successful comprehensionof the reading materials. The interactive reading model, a process in which the bottom-up reading model and the top-down reading model interact with each other, combines theadvantages of the bottom-up reading model and the top-down reading model into anorganic whole, and is a model created by alternatively or simultaneously using thebottom-up reading model and the top-down reading model. Thus, the interactive readingmodel is a model truly reflecting the cognitive process of language reading comprehension.