A Study Of College English Reading Strategies From The Perspective Of Piaget's Theory Of Cognitive Development

According to Piaget's theory of cognitive development, reading comprehension is a cognitive developmental process, a voluntary constructive process of meaning and a process of dynamic equilibration. During the reading process, a reader employs various reading strategies to activate his existing schema to assimilate the new information from the reading material or to change his existing schema even construct a new schema to accommodate to the new information from the reading material. The reader's schema is constantly enriched, improved and developed in the dynamic process of equilibration from equilibrium, disequilibrium to a new equilibrium with the reader's comprehension of the text realized. Reader's schemata are generally divided into four major types, namely linguistic schemata, content schemata, formal schemata and strategic schemata. Based on this, the author puts forward a new classification system of reading strategies. Reading strategies which contribute to the equilibration of reading are divided by the author into four types: strategies of linguistic schemata (SLS), strategies of content schemata (SCS), strategies of formal schemata (SFS) and strategies of monitoring schemata (SMS).The author employed means of data collection like records of self-statement, questionnaire surveys and interviews as well as the research method of quasi-experiment to explore whether college non-English majors use the reading strategies that the author classifies as SLS, SCS, SFS and SMS in the process of English reading, how they use these strategies, and what sub-strategies they use to assimilate or accommodate to the new information to enlarge or construct the reader's schemata to reach the equilibrium of cognition and arrive at the comprehension of the text,Two questionnaire surveys show the following: non-English majors really use the four types of reading strategies that the author has classified; there is no significant difference between the use of these four types of reading strategies by male and female students; the mean value of the use of each strategy and each type of strategies by successful readers is higher than that of the unsuccessful readers; and there is a significant difference in the use of 2 types of reading strategies and 8 specific strategies. Successful readers use SFS and SMS more often than unsuccessful readers. Interviews of successful readers and unsuccessful readers also prove the difference that successful readers use these reading strategies more often than unsuccessful readers and successful readers put more weight on reading process than reading production. The quasi-experimental research shows that training unsuccessful readers these reading strategies has a positive effect on their reading achievements.In addition, the thesis probes into how readers use these reading strategies to assimilate or accommodate to new information in the process of reading comprehension, and gives some enlightenment to the teaching of College English reading and to the students as how to be a strategic reader and how to achieve the transition from learning -to -read to reading- to-learn.To research reading strategies from Piaget's theory of cognitive development with reading strategies classified into SLS, SCS, SFS and SMS can enrich the theories of reading strategies and provide a new perspective to conduct studies on reading strategies. Practically, it can bring some new enlightenment to the teaching and learning of College English reading.