Effects Of Cognitive Load On Reading Effectiveness In Mobile English Learning

English reading has always been seen as the most important and difficult part of English teaching and learning,and accounts for a very high percentage in all sorts of English tests.Therefore,both teachers and students take English reading very seriously.Mobile learning,being the effective supplement of traditional class teaching,has an essential significance in attracting students' learning interests and cultivating students reading habits.However,compared with reading printed materials,because of the inherent characteristics of mobile devices such as small screen size and the interactive mode,learners may bear too heavier cognitive load during the learning process,which will have a bad effect on reading.Therefore,educators and designers should take full consideration of cognitive load,trying to optimize and control it so as to better service students' learning.Cognitive Load Theory is an important theory in guiding the instruction design and the development of software.According to it,the course of information processing needs to consume cognitive resources,causing extraneous,intrinsic and germane cognitive loads so as to affect the learning and task achievement.Therefore,given the realities of mobile language learning,this paper,based on Cognitive Load Theory,discusses the effect of cognitive load on reading effectiveness in mobile English learning.Meanwhile,reviewing previous studies achievement,the author attempts to summarize the design methods to optimize and control cognitive load in mobile reading,so as to promote students' cognitive process and improve their reading effectiveness.Ten English major junior students,selected as research participants for data collection,were divided into the experimental group and controlgroup.After the experiment,learning journal entries,post-test scores,questionnaire and interview data were collected and analyzed.The research results show that: firstly,when reading easy materials,the reading effectiveness would not be affected by the low cognitive load.However,when the reading materials are relatively difficult,students' cognitive load becomes too heavy,and such heavy cognitive would impede students' learning achievement and learning satisfaction.Secondly,the design methods proposed in this paper are applicable in optimizing control cognitive load,and improve students' learning achievement and learning satisfaction.Finally,the author also points out the limitation of this paper and teaching implication to education and software design.