Mohammad Taghi Shahnazari - Assistant Professor, University of Isfahan, Iran
Azizollah Dabaghi - Assistant Professor, University of Isfahan, Iran

Reading is a cognitive activity involving skills, strategies, attentionalresources, knowledge resources and their integration. The reader’s role is todecode the written symbols to allow for the recovery of information fromlong-term memory to construct a plausible interpretation of the writer’smessage. Various number of reading models have been proposed byresearchers among which some focus on motivational and emotional aspectsof reading. Others highlight the cognitive aspects of reading. In this study,the models characterizing reading in terms of cognitive aspects arerevieweded, and different viewpoints on the reading process are described.This may help EFL/ESL teachers to improve their understanding of thereading process, update their perspectives on teaching reading tasks whichin turn might result in more efficient learning by not putting too muchcognitively demanding reading tasks on EFL/ESL learners.

Reading Models; Attentional Resources; EFL Learners; Cognitive Process