Keywords: reading strategies, cognitive reading strategies
This study is aimed to find out the most frequently cognitive reading
strategies used by the English Department students. The research applies
descriptive quantitative-qualitative approach. The population of this research was
the English Department Students Batch 2014 of Lambung Mangkurat University,
Banjarmasin in the academic year of 2015/2016. The total numbers of the
population was 130 students. The sampling technique of this research was total
sampling technique with all of the population as the samples. The instruments
used were Cognitive reading strategies questionnaire and interview.
The results showed that all of the Cognitive reading strategies are used by
the students. It only differs in the frequency. There are six frequently used
cognitive reading strategies by the students namely: Resourcing, Repetition,
Deduction, Imagery, Elaboration, and Inferencing strategy. Those strategies are
represented by using dictionary to look for unknown words, re-read the text to
remember important points, read the first line of every paragraph to understand
the whole text, look at illustration/pictures and guess how they are related to the
text, use background knowledge to work out the meaning, and use the text title to
predict the content of the text.
Accordingly, it is suggested that the lecturers should teach how to use
strategies effectively and apply the reading strategies. Students are suggested to be
more conscious about the reading strategies and utilize it in reading
comprehension. For future researchers, it is suggested to include larger samples
and to use more instruments.