Study On English Reading Comprehension From The Perspective Of "Cognition-Knowledge Bilingual Double Structures"

In recent years, English reading comprehension in English teaching becomes more and more important not only because it appears in examinations, but also because it penetrates into each field of the society and becomes essential way and tool of obtaining English knowledge and skills for the students. No matter in such examinations as college entrance examinations, college English Band Four and Six and postgraduate entrance examination, even in TOEFL, GRE and IELTS, etc., the points of English comprehension takes a large proportion of the total points(30-40%). Along with informational globalization and English popularization in the world, students of most specialities need to obtain specialized knowledge by reading English literature and relevant books. So the higher requirements are advanced for college students' reading ability and efficiency of obtaining new knowledge. English reading is no doubt the very important part of college English teaching; however, in current environment of China, the reading ability of students is not high. Thus, a further study on reading theory draws much attention of many educational researchers.On the basis of theoretical analysis and experimental investigation, the thesis analyzes word identification and mental mechanism of English reading comprehension in English reading for Chinese students from the perspective of "Cognition-Knowledge Bilingual Double Structures" (CKBDS) hypothesis--put forward by professor Yin Demo in "3rd Asia TEFL International Conference" in Beijing on Nov. 5th, 2005 initially and then points out that mother tongue's (Chinese) thinking is significant and non-ignorable in English reading comprehension.The thesis includes six chapters in total.Chapter 1 introduces research background, research content and significance of the research and elaborates the importance of English reading teaching in China. It also presents a new theoretical hypothesis-CKBDS after analyzing and reviewing the reading literature briefly.Chapter 2 analyzes and reviews reading theory literature including definition of reading comprehension, reading model (bottom-up model, top-down model and interactive model) and schema theory and points out the limitations of these theories.Chapter 3 elaborates CKBDS hypothesis. CKBDS refers to mother tongue's (Chinese) Knowledge Structure (KS) and Cognitive Structure (CS) and English KS and CS. The thesis points out that the nature of the KS is language knowledge of two languages, i.e. mother tongue's knowledge and English knowledge (mother tongue and English for short in this thesis); the core of CS is thinking, i.e. mother tongue's thinking and English thinking. And the thesis then further demonstrates and discusses and deep relationship behind the CKBDS-the relationship among mother tongue and mother tongue's thinking and English and English thinking.Chapter 4 analyzes the process of word identification in English reading comprehension and the reading mental mechanism of Chinese students and classifies reading activities. It points out that mother tongue's thinking is significant and non-ignorable in English reading comprehension and puts forward the following questions:1) In the process of reading comprehension, when and how well the English learners rely on mother tongue's thinking?2) In reading English text of different difficulty, does the mother tongue's thinking of English learners of the same English level function differently? What are the differences?Chapter 5 answers the questions put forward by empirical study and gets the conclusion: In English reading, English learners (i.e. Chinese students in this thesis) depends on mother tongue's thinking to a great extent and mother tongue's thinking participates in various reading activities; the degree of dependency of English learners with the same level on mother tongue's thinking is almost the same in reading texts with different difficulty, but the functions of mother tongue's thinking are different in different texts.Chapter 6 outlines the main issues of the thesis and points out the implications on teaching.