4. Cognitive Strategy Instruction
Cognition deals with someone’s thinking or memory while cognitive strategy instruction is associated as an instructional approach which emphasizes the
development of thinking skills and processes as a means to enhance learning Livingstone, 1977. The purpose of this instruction is to aid the students to be
more strategic, self-reliant, flexible, and productive in their learning process. The interest of using cognitive strategy in second language classroom has
grown greater through years. The using of cognitive strategy instruction facilitates the students to develop necessary skills where it may bring the students into self-
regulated learners. By doing self-regulation toward their learning, the students may enable to monitor their progress and their improvements. According to the
psychologists and educational researchers Najar, 1998, the learners who enable to take charge of their own learning are called the successful learners. They are also
able to apply an appropriate strategy in the learning situation to lead them to comprehension. Furthermore, the research on the using of cognitive learning
strategy in the classroom showed that it is an essential strategy for the success of learning Najar, 1998.
The implementation of cognitive strategy has comprised content and skill areas, namely: reading, writing, science, and language learning. According to
Cohen 1996: 4, cognitive strategy involves the learning and the using of the target language. It also includes the using of background knowledge to
comprehend, summarize, and visualize the new information from the written text. Moreover, the background knowledge may support the learners to solve the
problem which occurs in the written texts.
The introduction to several strategies has been conducted by educators to improve the cognitive area of the students. Skimming, using context to figure out
words and meaning, self-testing, and note taking were some of the reading strategies which conducted in order to improve the students’ reading ability
Resnick, 1987: 23-24. The result of applying these strategies showed that students became more aware of their comprehension strategies and they tend to
apply the strategies more often. The problem arose when the strategies dealt with the skilled readers and the unskilled readers. The unskilled readers applied the
strategies indiscriminately and tend to disrupt comprehension. Therefore, the educators tried to find appropriate strategy which could bring profit even for the
unskilled readers. Palinscar and Brown 1984 introduced a strategy called Reciprocal Teaching to enhance the reading comprehension of the skilled and
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