Independent academic reading within academic context requires learners to make continual decisions about

difficulties in monitoring comprehension and adapting strategies effectively. By situating reading within

Simon’s bounded rationality, this study conceptualizes decision-making skills as problem-solving under

cognitive and contextual limitations. Findings are expected to shed light on the decision points learners

identify (e.g., slowing down, rereading, or seeking external support) and the cues that shape those choices. The

study contributes theoretically by reframing decision-making process in academic reading practically by

offering insights for TESL instructors to scaffold adaptive choices, thereby enhancing reading literacy and

Independent academic reading is a critical learning skill for pre-university students, particularly those majoring

with stronger reading literacy and strategy use (OECD, 2023). In Malaysia, studies have shown that ESL

undergraduates frequently employ metacognitive reading strategies, particularly problem-solving approaches

such as rereading and inference (Rajab et al., 2017). However, performance gaps persist. They may be aware

of strategies but still struggle to deploy them adaptively in independent reading tasks (Li et al. 2024). This gap

points to the importance of understanding how ESL learners perceive their own decision-making processes

when engaging with academic texts.

Scholars consistently emphasize the distinction between reading skills and reading strategies, noting that

strategies are deliberate, goal-oriented actions readers employ to manage comprehension (Afflerbach et al.,

2008). Instruments such as the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI) have been

widely used to demonstrate how global, problem-solving, and support strategies are applied during academic

independent academic reading, this perspective suggests that readers make constrained choices about whether

to persist with difficult passages, switch strategies, or settle for partial comprehension depending on perceived

task demands and available resources.

Metacognitive and self-regulated learning research aligns with Simon’s model, framing reading as a cycle of

guide subsequent control decisions, such as whether to reread or move forward. However, these judgments are

often prone to error, resulting in “illusions of competence” (Bjork et al., 2013). For ESL pre-university

students, these bounded and sometimes flawed decision-making processes can significantly influence how

effectively they engage with complex texts in preparation for higher education.

evolving thoughts, skills development as well as supports (Good et al., 2009) that are necessary and critical for

academics to leverage pedagogical approaches (Sharma et al., 2019) on English Education in Malaysia. By

conceptualizing academic reading as a sequence of constrained decisions under bounded rationality, the study

contributes to both theory and practice. Theoretically, it reframes independent reading as a decision-making

process rather than merely a strategy inventory. Practically, it offers insights not only for instructors from

TESL programs but also academics from other disciplines on how to scaffold students’ decision-making while

reading independently, promote more adaptive reading behaviours, and ultimately strengthen reading literacy

within Malaysia’s broader educational agenda (National Library of Malaysia, 2024).

Independent academic reading as a strategic, decision-making activity Independent academic reading (IAR)

like rereading and highlighting may feel effective but are less powerful than generative or elaborative

strategies (Callender & McDaniel, 2009; Yan et al., 2014). According to Hunutlu (2022), while many students

reported using strategies such as rereading and translation, their metacognitive monitoring often fails to

distinguish between productive and unproductive decisions while reading.

Research increasingly shows that IAR is a strategic and adaptive process especially in multilingual settings.

ESL learners adjust their reading strategies depending on text difficulty, time limits, and purpose—an example

of decision-making under bounded cognitive capacity (Jeevaratnam & Stapa, 2022). In digital environments,

readers must also decide whether to use AI tools, such as summarizers or glossaries, highlighting how reading

Research on IAR often measures how readers perceive their strategy use through validated instruments. The

Herbert Simon’s notion of bounded rationality reframes decision-making as adaptive rather than optimizing;

people satisfice - selecting an option that is “good enough” in given limits of information, time, and cognitive

resources—rather than compute an unreachable optimum (Simon, 1955). In his foundational articles, real

decision makers rely on aspiration levels and heuristics to terminate search once acceptable criteria are met

(Simon, 1956). This lens is especially apt for independent academic reading in a second language (ESL),

where learners frequently decide what to read, how deeply to process, and when to stop searching or rereading

under severe constraints of time, linguistic proficiency, topic knowledge, and task demands.

In academic reading among ESL learners, bounded rationality is evident in academic reading when readers

satisfice in information seeking. Prabha et al., 2007 claims that students often stop searching when they have

language. Language comprehension is constrained by working memory capacity, which limits syntactic

parsing and integration during reading; smaller effective capacity yields more shallow or delayed integrations,

particularly under complex syntax or ambiguity (Just & Carpenter, 1992). Complementarily, Cognitive Load

Theory argues that learning (and by extension, complex comprehension) is throttled by limited working

memory and by extraneous load in task design; minimizing extraneous load improves performance under

constraint (Sweller, 1988). For ESL readers who must allocate resources to decoding, vocabulary inference,

and discourse integration simultaneously, these capacity and load constraints make “good-enough”

comprehension a rational outcome. This merges with the good-enough processing where readers often

construct superficial or underspecified representations that suffice for current goals rather than exhaustively

disambiguating every detail which is another satisficing strategy under bounded resources (Karimi et al.,

rationality, as learners regulate their reading under cognitive and linguistic constraints making satisficing rather

than fully optimal decisions. Metacognitive reading strategies (planning, monitoring, and evaluating) help

learners allocate scarce attention, select heuristics, and set aspiration levels – readers decide in advance what

counts as ‘enough’ understanding for the task, given the constraints of time, cognition, and language

proficiency. Studies with English as Second Language (ESL) learners in higher institutions consistently show

designing better mental shortcuts and better stopping rules for bounded agents, enabling more vigilant

satisficing when facing complex texts.

behaviours as rational adaptations to linguistic and cognitive constraints; (b) predicts heuristic reading (gist-

first, section targeting, abstract-led sampling) as ecologically rational responses to the structure of academic

articles; and (c) motivates instructional scaffolds that reshape the environment (reducing extraneous load,

clarifying task goals) and cultivate metacognitive control so that learners satisfice well rather than poorly. This

synthesis connects decision science with second language (L2) reading research: when ESL students read

independently, they are not failed optimizers but bounded agents whose choices can be improved by better

heuristics, clearer aspiration levels, and environments designed with cognitive constraints in mind—exactly the

with Simon’s framework - limited time or effort, heuristic selection & satisficing thresholds.