Cognitive Structure and Foreign Language Reading Comprehension

The paper focuses on reading comprehension skills in the context of foreign language education. Previous research has shown that reading is a multi-level process, during which the reader gradually reconstructs the meaning of the text by means of bottom-up and top-down mental operations. Our aim is to highlight the importance of cognitive structuring in the process of foreign language reading comprehension. Since other factors, such as language predispositions, stylistic and socio-cultural knowledge, are also taken into account in the process of foreign language reading and processing textual information, the reader is forced to construct the meaning of the text in an ambiguous situation. He often has to cope with new vocabulary, unfamiliar text-writing conventions, and elements of foreign culture. In this context, the cognitive-personality predispositions of the individual, or their ability of cognitive structuring in an ambiguous situation is very important. The research goal is to find out the connection between foreign language reading comprehension and the cognitive-personality variable Personal Need for Structure and its sub-factors - Desire for Structure and Response to Lack of Structure. In the context of foreign language education, cognitive structure is manifested in anticipation of events as well as in understanding and prediction of the situational context. In our research we focus on such variables as performance in foreign language (English and German) text reading and Personal Need for Structure and its sub-factors. The results of the research confirmed the importance of cognitive structuring in terms of successful text comprehension. Moreover, the results of the analyzes point to possible connections between cognitive structure and characteristics of a foreign language, or language proficiency level.