Students’ Cognitive Reading Strategies and Their Reading Comprehension

Abstract

Reading comprehension is a fundamental aspect that has to be acquired by the students in learning language. However, this comprehension is difficult to achieve. Therefore, it is required strategies to develop this reading comprehension. This study reports the use of cognitive strategies which are a part or Language Learning Strategies employed by senior high school students in their reading activity. This study focuses to investigate cognitive reading strategies employed by the students, their reasons for employing those strategies, and the students’ cognitive reading strategy used in relation to their reading comprehension. A total of 39 second grade senior high school students in Bandung participated in this mixed method study; qualitative explanatory and correlation studies. The data are collected by using the adoption of Oxford’s Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) questionnaire, reading comprehension test, and interview. The results of the study show that the students employed cognitive strategies in reading comprehension. The data obtained through the questionnaire and validated by the interview show that the students employed cognitive strategies in a moderate frequency level. Then, receiving messages was the most frequently used category by the participants, while creating structures for input and output category was the least frequently used by the students. Further, from the interview it was obviously seen that mostly cognitive strategies are beneficial strategies to  comprehend the written text. By employing cognitive strategies, the students believe they become more comprehending to the text rather than the students who did not employ them. In terms of the connection between students’ cognitive reading strategies and their reading comprehension, the correlation test shows a significant positive correlation between these aspects (.528 with p-value < 0.01). It indicates that students who employed a variety of cognitive reading strategies tend tohave good reading comprehension. Based on the findings, it is recommended that teachers introduce cognitive reading strategies to the students and facilitate them with the appropriate task to explore their cognitive reading strategies.