Case-based Exploration On Chinese College English Instructors’ Cognitions In Teaching Reading Comprehension

Recent years have seen the increasing interest in the research of teacher cognition. The reason behind it is that the gap between instructors’ teaching theories and their actual teaching practices is becoming larger and larger. Researchers gradually realized the significance of the mental world of instructors in teaching and showed that the chief determinant of instructors’ successful teaching practices should be their theory-in-action, which refers to their attitudes, beliefs and values towards teaching. This phenomenon also appears in the field of language teaching, especially in the second or foreign language teaching(EFL/ ESL). To explore language instructors’ cognitions will help instructors become much clearer about their own beliefs towards teaching. It means that the exploration will provide instructors the chance to reflect on their own teaching and to adjust or make changes if necessary, which in turn will shed light on their actual teaching practices. Therefore, it is of great necessity to uncover instructors’ cognitions. However, research of instructors’ cognitions pertaining to language teaching mostly exists in other countries and with limited research content, such as grammar instruction or with regard to the pre-service instructors’ beliefs. There is a lack of research on instructors’ cognitions in other aspects of language teaching, for instance, reading comprehension and there is also a divergence of research focus away from experienced instructors. The need of this sort of research is much more urgent in China, since most of its existing studies are restricted to reviews of relevant research in foreign countries. Therefore, this present study is undertaken to explore the cognitions of in-service Chinese college English instructors from another aspect of language teaching---reading comprehension instruction.A diversity of qualitative research methods, which includes semi-structured interviews, classroom observations and stimulated recall interviews are employed in the present research to compare and contrast two in-service reading comprehension instructors’ cognitions, with the purpose of uncovering the content of their cognitions, examining the correspondence between their cognitions and actual teaching practices and finding out the possible influencing factors that underlie their teaching cognitions.The findings showed that even though these two instructors have their own respective characteristics in reading comprehension instruction, there is a trend of becoming more similar in the content of their cognitions; in addition, both of their cognitions are well aligned with their classroom practices, with different underlying reasons.These findings illuminate us in several ways. For these two instructors, they can be more aware of their own beliefs, especially those adverse ones. This will provide them the opportunity to reflect, change or improve them, which is useful for their enhancement in reading comprehension instruction; to the effect that, this sort of research will promote instructors’ professional development. For another thing, this research is one of those which contribute to the holistic and systematical descriptions of language instructors’ cognitions. They will ultimately promote the implementation of education innovations, since instructors are the key factor for the proceeding of an innovation.