Abstract:
The purpose of this research was to study the structural model of a learning hierarchy of the English reading comprehension abilities following Bloom's claasification of six levels of cognitive skill: knowledge & memory, comprehension, apllication, analysis, synthesis,, and evaluation. 380 second year students studying EAP I in the Faulty of Commerce & Accountancy and the Faculty of Economics, Chulalongkorn University in the academic year 1995 were used as the subjects of the study. The instrument used was an English reading proficiency test constructed to measure the six abilities of the cognitive skill. The data was analyzed by the Path Analysis method with the Partial Least Squares technique. The models studied were tested against the empirical data following Specht's procedure available in Amos program. Findings: The model constructed was similar to the models studies earlier in that it was a branching and accumulative model in which the abilities at the lower levels have both direct and indirect effects on the abilities at the higher level. It was, however, significantly different from the models studies earlier in its branching. It had three terminal abilities: synthesis, branching directly from knowledge and memory skill, analysis and evaluation which both branch from comprehension skill.