Cognitive Context And English Reading: A Process And Efficiency Relativity Analysis

Reading is an important means for human beings to acquire knowledgeand understand the world. With the rapid development of the modern society,people should not only have the solid and generous basic knowledge, butalso have strong self-learning skills to engage life-long learning, which canadapt the challenge of the development of the society. Reading is one of themain forms of self-learning．People who have good reading ability canengage more knowledge. Many foreign language experts appeal that readingneed to be paid attention to. Therefore, how to improve the readingefficiency is very worth to be discussed. For the reading efficiency, thethesis researches English reading process and efficiency combined withcognitive context.If reading is a process of getting information, the key to success iscognitive context which includes knowledge script, psychological schema,and socio-psychological representation. Three aspects of reading process,i.e., linguistic knowledge, content information, cultural knowledge and fourfactors affect reading efficiency which includes background knowledge,extension of motivation, size of vocabulary and strategy.Knowledge script refers to the knowledge structure of a particularevent; psychological schema refers to the information structure of thegeneral concept; and socio-psychological representation refers to theknowledge or the information as a whole in the world of experience. In theprocess of reading, linguistic knowledge refers to vocabulary and grammar; content information refers to the content of the text; cultural knowledgerefers to the transmitted culture through the linguistic knowledge. In readingefficiency, background knowledge refers to readers’knowledge about anevent; motivation refers to readers’purpose; vocabulary refers to readers’vocabulary quantity; strategy refers to the strategy used by readers in theprocess of reading.The survey data and statistical analysis account for the fact that themost effective process is the interactive process，which is better than thetop-down process and the bottom-up process in dealing with cognitivecontext and English reading: a process and efficiency relativity. Top-downprocess means that the meaning of the text can be predicted and understoodthrough background knowledge; bottom-up process means that the text canbe understood through linguistic knowledge; interactive process means thatcombined with the advantage of top-down process and bottom-up process,readers can select and inference the contents of the text.The thesis discusses the researches of English reading of variousscholars at home and aboard, reveals different levels of the reading processand factors affecting reading efficiency and points out that the top-downprocess and the bottom-up process have their disadvantages. Through thetheoretical study and the questionnaire survey, the interactive process canimprove reading efficiency combined the analysis of the cognitive context,which is conducive to the construction of the cognitive context of readers.