Cognitive Psychology And The Teaching On Reading In EFL Classroom

It is well-known that reading plays an important role in studying English. However,it is known that some people are doing better English reading comprehension than others.What prevents people from understanding in English reading? What is happening in reading? From what aspects do we set out to improve English reading comprehension? This paper tries to discuss these problems from the cognitive point of view.Contacting with the practice of English teaching,the paper starts from one survey about the results of a reading exam,which reveals reading is a big issue for the students.In order to find out the real elements that affect reading, assumptions about the L1 reading are reviewed first.Then the paper further indicates that the general account of reading process includes lexical access and comprehension.From the point of view of cognitive psychology it is discovered that the intermediary system of cognition is the main factor that affects the subject's reading comprehension.To improve the subject's reading comprehension,recent research demonstrates that automatic word recognition is the basis of fluent L2 reading.The ability of making inference is also necessary to construct the meaning of the text as writers can not and do not need to make explicit everything that they want to communicate.Therefore, bettering the subject's intermediary system of cognition(knowledge structure and abilities structure) is the crucial solution to good reading.In teaching practice,to raise subjects' language competence,as a L2 teachers of English we emphasize to improve automatic word identification skills and enrich vocabulary knowledge,at the same time cultivate the subject' ability of making inference.For those who have entered the language threshold,text structural knowledge also plays a crucial role in the construction of a coherent mental representation.Thus language competence and text structural knowledge contribute considerably to L2 reading comprehension.