The Effects of using cognitive learning strategies on reading comprehension ability of Turkish students

THE EFFECTS OF USING COGNITIVE LEARNING STRATEGffiS ON READING COMPREHENSION ABILITY OF TÜRKISH STUDENTS HASAN BEük Ph. D. Thesis English Language Department Supervisor: Ass. Prof. Dr. Felımi Can Sendan September, 1998 217 Pages ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to (1) find out the strategies English-as a-Foreign Language students use in reading comprehension, and (2) enable these students to gain cognitive leaming strategies in order to faciütate comprehension. After clarifying cognitivist approach to learning and its role in reading comprehension through related literatüre it concentrates on cognitive learning strategies in reading comprehension. it first searches into what types of strategies English-as a-Foreign Language student use İn reading comprehension courses. in the next step, with the help of a training programme, this study aims to enable students to gain cognitive learning strategies in order to be successful in reading comprehension course, A reading comprehension lesson plan which was adapted from Jones (1991) was implemented for each lesson. The activities in this lesson plan were organised in a way that helps students use their previous knowledge in what they read. in addition, different techniques were used to stimulate their previous knowledge such asquestioning, semantic mapping, linking known to unknown, selecting the most important. Questionîng is considered an integrally related activity which provide higher order level of thinking. For this reason, in questioning process, the levels in the Bloom's Taxonomy (1956) were used. The results of the study show that there is a close relation between cognitive learning strategies and students success in reading comprehension since the students in the Experimental Group proved to be more successful than those in the Control Group. The results also support that cognitive learning training in reading comprehension enables readers to develop higher order level thinking skills and metacognitive strategies.fc KEY WORDS Cognitive learning Metacognitive strategies Long-term memory Short-term memory Meaningful learning Schenıata Higher level thinking Elaboration Concept ör Semantic mapping Reading comprehension strategies