Psychological Cognition of English Learners in Reading Comprehension

Abstract

Reading comprehension is an important aspect of English learning. This paper analyses the complex psychological cognition of English learners in reading comprehension, referring to the psychological cognition of humans in information acquisition and processing. Then, four orthogonal experiments were designed, involving two types of readers (freshmen in English major and native speakers) and two types of texts at different difficulty levels (simple and complex). The experimental data were subjected to comparative analysis. The results show that, throughout the reading comprehension, English learners and native speakers differ the most in the information decoding stage; if the text is simple, the difference is only reflected in decoding speed; if the text is complex, the difference is observed in both decoding speed and decoding results. The research findings provide new insights into English teaching.