Cognitive Analysis Of ESL H-score And L-score Learners' Reading Strategies Use

This paper intends to explore H-score and L-score learners' reading strategies in reading comprehension from the angle of cognitive psychology. Different from the traditional view, the cognitive view of reading suggests that reading is a cognitive process in which the reader engages in a conversation with the text or the author. In this view, reading is no longer merely a word-for-word translation process. Instead, it is an interaction. And thus the reader becomes an active participant in reading activity.The psychological fundamental elements for reading are introduced with emphasis on the cognitive and metacognitive strategies' effects on reading comprehension. And then an empirical study is conducted for verification. The quantitative and qualitative analyses of the data have generated the following major findings:(1) The present study reveals that reading strategies use is closely related to reading proficiency. Both of the H-score and L-score learners use reading strategies in reading comprehension, but there exist obvious differences which directly result in different reading proficiency. To be specific, a) The H-score learners have developed good and persistent reading habit in daily English study, which get the different reading strategies to be enforced, But the L-score learners cannot develop good habit of improving reading by enforcing reading strategies and reading ability; b) The H-score learners tend to use top-down reading models, tending to receive content previews because they are not susceptible to vocabulary and structure difficulties in reading. They can make best use of cues in context to get the general meaning by skimming, predicting and inferring; c) Employing metacognitive strategies, the H-score learners are good at reading in a planned way not only in daily arrangement of study but also in reading comprehension. They lay stress on the general meaning of the whole context, and then go to details if necessary; d) The H-score learners have accumulates a wealth of background knowledge, including linguistic knowledge, cultural knowledge as well as psychological knowledge.(2) The use of different types of reading strategies has significantly positive effect on English reading. H-score learners can use some metacognitive (such as, selective attention, monitoring, and planning) and cognitive strategies (such as, inferencing, summarizing, elaboration) effectively. In general, the more the learners employ reading strategies, the more efficient they become in reading test.