An Investigation into the Information Processing and Retrieve Among Iranian Second Language Learners

We acquire language when we understand and interpret what we read. Reading without comprehension is, therefore, nothing more than a frustrating practice. The present paper is an experimental qualitative research with the aim of helping students to be responsible for monitoring their comprehension process. This study makes an attempt to find out how learners perceive, and retrieve the newly received information while they are reading a text. This research also examines the performances of the learners obtained before and after the training course. We selected a group of 31 male pre-intermediate students with an average age of 13 years old. To examine the learners’ ability in detecting linguistic data as well as their conscious comprehension of the text, we asked the students to engage in a series of activities without them noticing of the purpose of the study. At the first attempt, they were assigned to read a text and scan as many nouns, pronouns, and the verbs as possible. At the second effort, the learners were required to classify the tenses and to detect the misspelt words practiced in the text as well. In the end, the candidates were asked to explain about their activities and their understanding of the text too. In the next phase, we helped students to control access to awareness. For this purpose, students were first introduced the concept of noticing hypothesis proposed by Schmidt in 1990. Then, they were taught some of the metacognitive strategies with the aim of improving their concentration on comprehension monitoring. Finally, the learners sat for a reading comprehension test to see to what extent they were able to control access to consciousness comprehension while they were involved in two different activities. The result showed that there has been a significant difference, due to the treatment, between the performances of the students before the training course with that of after the training procedure. It seems that the learners’ apparent lack of ability in controlling access to conscious awareness is a serious barrier which hinders them from touching the meaning.