Revista Argentina de Clínica Psicológica 2020, Vol. XXIX, N°2, 609-614
DOI: 10.24205/03276716.2020.285 609
P
SYCHOLOGICAL
C
OGNITION AND
I
TS
F
ORMATION
M
ECHANISM IN
E
NGLISH
R
EADING
C
OMPREHENSION
Feiwu Li
Abstract
The mastery of a foreign language is very helpful to college students. This paper aims to clarify the psychological cognition and its formation mechanism in English reading comprehension. First, a questionnaire survey was carried out in ten universities of both liberal arts and science in Zhejiang Province, China. The survey data were analysed systematically, in the light of the grade, gender and other factors of the respondents. The results show that college students of different grades differ greatly in psychological cognition of English reading comprehension; the cognition level gradually decreases from grade 1 to grade 3 and rebounds in grade 4 under the employment pressure; the English score of college students is positively correlated with the level of psychological cognition; during English reading comprehension, there are certain differences in psychological cognition between males and females, and the cognitive level of liberal art students is higher than that of science students. The research findings throw new lights on the relationship between foreign language learning and psychological cognition.
Key words: English Reading Comprehension, Psychological Cognition, English Learning, Questionnaire Survey.
Received: 09-02-19 | Accepted: 13-07-19
INTRODUCTION
It has been a long history to study foreign language learning at home and abroad. The early research on cognitive psychology was mainly based on the mental process of language users in the process of foreign languages learning (Jiang, Sawaki, & Sabatini, 2012; Taboada & Rutherford, 2011; Li, McBride-Chang, Wong et al., 2012). In the 1970s, foreign scholars divided the cognitive process of foreign languages learning into three aspects: learner psychology, learner socialization, and learner perception (Quirk & Beem, 2012; Cekiso, 2011). Later it evolved into direct learning and indirect learning strategies (Choi, Tong, & Cain 2016; Mahapatra, Das, Stack-Cutler et al., 2010): the learners have a unique style of personal learning, and are active in
School of Foreign Studies, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China.
E-Mail: [email protected]
learning; they can properly understand the semantic difference between the foreign language and native language; they have a good method of language learning so as to exercise and constantly improve their language system;
they’re willing to use language for
communication. (Gebauer, Zaunbauer, & Möller, 2013; Papaioannou, Machaira, & Theano, 2013; Hamm & Mitchell, 1997).
For English language learners, English vocabulary and grammar are preliminary learning requirements for effective reading and communication in English. The English learning is a gradual process, and the learner's psychology in this process has a great impact on foreign language learning (Stanovich, 1991; Carroll, 2000; Rasinski, 2019). However, most of the current researches have been performed on learning methods and teaching approaches, while the research on cognitive analysis and learning mechanisms from psychological perspectives is relatively rare, and the research
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results are also not systematic enough (Huey, 1908, Jackson & Coltheart, 2013).
In view of the above, this paper attempts to study the psychological cognition and formation mechanism in the process of English reading comprehension based on the cognitive psychology theory. For this, it conducts a survey analysis for English learning of some college students from 10 universities of certain area using questionnaires and mathematical statistics. The research results provide a theoretical basis for improving learners' foreign language learning ability and cognitive level.
BASIC THEORY AND RESEARCH METHODS OF
PSYCHOLOGICAL COGNITION IN FOREIGN
LANGUAGE LEARNING
Basic theory of cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is mainly to study human's advanced mental processes, such as perception, representation, memory, language, and thinking. In a broad sense, all the processes of human cognition belong to cognitive psychology. Cognition can be divided into a series of stages, and each stage has a specific system mode, which altogether constitute a series of products. The cognitive process of human beings is likened to that of information processing, including different systems of information input, processing, storage, reaction, etc. i.e., the information processing is to combine the various parts together in different ways, mainly involving a sensing system, a control system, a processing system, and a reaction system.
Modern cognitive psychology mainly includes four major viewpoints: 1) During the information processing, the people regard the transmission of information as a processing system, and they store and search for the information in terms of its forms such as acoustic code, configuration codes, and semantic codes in memory. 2) The existing knowledge structure has a decisive effect on current cognitive activities. 3) Each cognitive process interacts and links together to be a whole. 4) Human psychological activity is the process of finding and accepting, encoding, and processing the information in the information structure.
Psychological cognitive process of foreign language learning
Scholars at home and abroad have had an
in-depth discussion on the cognitive process of different learners’ psychology mainly through the form of questionnaire survey. Despite the inconsistency in the comparison results, compared with the poor learners, the characteristics of good foreign language learners are basically summarized in the following four aspects: those being good at learning foreign languages can use reference books and dictionaries, and are very sensitive to new knowledge; learning foreign languages is not just memorizing words by rote, but guess the meaning of words through semantic in reading comprehension and make their own expressions; they can learn through various resources available such as reading, watching TV, and listening to music etc., always pay attention to the situation of self-learning, and make a proper learning plan; they are good at using flexible strategies and constantly improving their learning skills in the learning process.
In the acquisition process of a second language, the learners get the meaning of letters unconsciously. This learning of complex information in an incidental manner is called implicit learning. The implicit learning is mainly characterized by autonomy, abstraction, comprehension, and stability, objectively expounding the changes in people's psychological cognition in the learning process of foreign languages. Autonomy is mainly reflected in learner's efforts to accomplish tasks hidden under the rules without awareness, and learn to cope with changes in complex environments.; abstraction means that the learners transfer knowledge to the same or similar category after learning a kind of knowledge; comprehension is to discover the meaning that is not previously included in the learning process; stability means that free from outside interference during the learning process, the learners can continuously solidify the knowledge that it has learned over time.
ANALYSIS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL COGNITION IN
THE PROCESS OF ENGLISH READING
COMPREHENSION
Survey on psychological cognition in English reading comprehension
This paper uses the form of questionnaire survey to study the psychological cognition process and its influencing factors in the process of English reading comprehension. With
PSYCHOLOGICAL COGNITION AND ITS FORMATION MECHANISM IN ENGLISH READING COMPREHENSION 611
reference to the existing research results, the questionnaire was designed and compiled by a series of interviews, and then modified through the expert review. Afterwards, the T test was performed on the questionnaire to delete the insignificant factors, and finally determine the formal questionnaire used in the survey. Table 1 shows the survey content of the final version questionnaire, and Figure 1 shows the research process.
The survey was conducted on students from 10 universities of both liberal arts and science in Zhejiang Province. A total of 583 questionnaires were distributed and 562 were recovered with a recovery rate of 96.4%; among them, 538 were valid questionnaires, with the effective rate of 92.3%. The basic information of the survey respondents is shown in Table 2.
Figure 1
.
Research process
Development and revision of questionnaires
Reliability analysis of questionnaire
Formation of formal questionnaire
Choosing the objec t of study
Questionnaire release and recovery
Data processing
Table 1.
Contents of the questionnaire
problem Fully
agree
Partial
consent Commonly
Partial disagree
Totally disagree The level of English achievement is entirely determined by
ability. 5 4 3 2 1
English is not good because the correct method is not used. 5 4 3 2 1
Low interest in English learning is one of the reasons for poor
English performance. 5 4 3 2 1
English learning is not good because of bad attitude. 5 4 3 2 1
Poor English results make English too difficult to learn. 5 4 3 2 1
A good teacher is the key to learning English. 5 4 3 2 1
I can't learn English well because I don't have enough talent. 5 4 3 2 1
The reason why I did well in the exam was that I had good luck. 5 4 3 2 1
I'm afraid I can't cope with difficult problems. 5 4 3 2 1
You get nervous when you encounter English problems. 5 4 3 2 1
I have a gift for language. 5 4 3 2 1
I can't remember words because I don't have a good memory. 5 4 3 2 1
No one else has a good command of English. 5 4 3 2 1
I have a good sense of English. 5 4 3 2 1
It's hard to listen to a teacher's course. 5 4 3 2 1
It's hard to keep up with the teacher's progress. 5 4 3 2 1
Insufficient confidence in improving English reading. 5 4 3 2 1
Table 2.
Survey of student information statistics
Category Subcategory Number Percentage
Gender Male 284 52.79%
Female 254 47.21%
Major Liberal arts 275 51.12%
Science 263 48.88%
Grade
Freshman 154 28.62%
Sophomore 168 31.23%
Junior 142 26.39%
Senior 74 13.75%
Achievement
CET-6 58 10.78%
CET-4 158 29.37%
Not pass 147 27.32%
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Their scores of College English Test are shown in Figure 2. It can be seen from Table 2 that the ratio of male to female was close to 1:1, in line with reality, and the number of students in liberal arts and sciences was also relatively balanced, indicating that the results of the survey are more realistic. As shown in Figure 2, the number of students passing the CET-6 was the least, accounting for only 10.78% of the total, and those who failed and didn’t register for the test reached 59.85%, indicating that it is still an urgent solution to improve the English reading comprehension of college students.
Figure 2
.
Number of passengers of English
level examination
Psychological cognition and influencing factors in English reading comprehension
Before analysing the psychological factors that affect college students' English reading
comprehension, firstly it’s necessary to
systematically analyse the overall characteristics of the survey data, and initially understand their basic psychological cognition. The statistical results are shown in Table 3.
The 5-point scoring system was adopted in this study. The score below 3 points represents the general level, and the higher the score, the
higher the level. According to the data in Table 3 above, the implicit strategy obviously scored lower than other strategies, indicating that the college students’ English cognition is at the level of “basically agree”. Next, the analysis was conducted on the impact of different gender, grade, major and English grades on their psychological cognition in the process of English reading comprehension.
Figure 3
.
Psychological cognition of college
students in different grades
Figure 3 shows the college students’ psychological cognition of English reading comprehension in terms of grade difference. It can be seen from the figure that the overall level of psychological cognition was decreasing, the level of cognition gradually decreased from the freshman year to the junior year, and increased in the senior year, surpassing the freshman year in the aspects of listening, reading and writing, metacognition, and internal strategy. Whereas, in the aspects of word cognition, there was almost no differences in the freshman year to the junior year, but a clear improvement in the senior year. This indicates that under the employment pressure in the senior year, the
Table 3.Psychological cognitive statistics of English reading comprehension
Cognition Effective number Average Standard deviation
Explicit strategy
Metacognition 538 3.75 0.523
Listening, reading and writing 538 3.32 0.653
Emotion 538 3.63 0.234
Word 538 3.12 0.662
Overall explicit strategy 538 3.45 0.472
Implicit strategy 538 2.74 0.733
PSYCHOLOGICAL COGNITION AND ITS FORMATION MECHANISM IN ENGLISH READING COMPREHENSION 613
student had to re-emphasize the study of English, reflecting the improvement of English cognition in many aspects.
Figure 4 shows the college students’ psychological cognition in terms of different English test performance. It can be seen that college students showed obvious differences in all aspects of cognition; the psychological cognition of the students passing the CET-6 was higher than those passing CET-4, the psychological cognition of students passing CET-4 was higher those non-passed, and that of students non-passed was higher than those failing to register, which indicates that the better the English performance, the higher the level of psychological cognition. Also, the analysis for survey data shows that the higher English test performance means a better use of English strategy, and there was little difference in implicit strategy between the students passing and failing in CET-6, but an obvious difference between the students passed and non-entry.
Figure 4
.
Psychological cognition of students
with different English levels
Figure 5 shows the level of psychological cognition in the process of reading comprehension in terms of different genders, It can be seen that there were obvious differences in the two aspects of English listening, reading, and writing and implicit strategies; the males scored higher than females in the implicit strategy, and females scored higher than males in listening, reading, and writing, indicating that males are better in the use of implicit strategy, and females are superior to males in the aspect of listening, reading, and writing.
Figure 6 shows the level of psychological
cognition in terms of different majors. It can be seen that the cognitive level of liberal arts students was generally higher than that of science students, indicating that liberal arts students are better at language learning than science students; they both were basically the same in the use of implicit strategy, but differed obviously in the two aspects of metacognition, and listening, reading, and writing. So, the overall cognitive level of the liberal arts students is higher than that of science students.
Figure 5
.
Influence of gender on English
cognitive level
Figure 6
.
The influence of different majors
on English cognitive level
CONCLUSIONS
Using the questionnaires and mathematical analysis methods, this paper statistically analyses the English learning of the survey
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respondents, and systematically explores the language psychological cognition and formation mechanism of the students of different grades and genders in the process of English reading comprehension. The main conclusions are as follows:
There were some differences in the English scores and psychological cognition levels of college students between different grades. The cognitive level of college students' English learning declined with the increase of grades year by year; under the employment pressure, the senior students enhanced their English learning intensity, which significantly increased their level of English cognition.
Students' English learning scores reflect their psychological cognitive level of English learning to a certain extent. The higher the English learning score, the higher their level of English psychological cognition, and on the contrary, the students' psychological cognition level is lower.
Comparative analysis found that there were some differences in psychological cognition and implicit strategies between males and females; the cognitive level of English reading comprehension for liberal arts students is higher than that of science students.
Acknowledgements
The study was supported by “The Thirteenth Five-year Plan Project of Guangdong Provincial Philosophy and Social Science (Grant No. GD16WXZ10)”.
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