The Effect Of Field Dependence And Field Independence On Test-takers' Performance On Language Test

Individual difference has long been considered as an important factor in the field of second language acquisition that affects second language learners'outcomes (Altman, 1980; Ellis,1981). The modern pedagogy and the psychology divided person's individuality difference into three parts:(1) the intelligence and prior knowledge; (2) achievement, motivation and their corresponding personality traits and (3) learning style. Learning styles among the three play a more direct role in the learning process, and cognitive style is an important and indispensable factor of learning style. In recent years, many researches have been done in language testing fields from the cognitive view. One main tendency of such researches is to study the relationship between test-takers' cognitive style and performance in language testing, at the same time, to study their cognitive process in language testing. Studies have shown that cognitive style has significant influence on language learners'test results. These researches mainly study the cognition style from the macroscopic angle, probe into the effect of Field Dependence/Independence (FDI) on comprehensive tests, including writing, reading, cloze, listening, translation etc., the author came to the conclusion that the field independent language learners overall do better on the comprehensive test than field dependent learners. Few researches have been done on the effect of cognitive style on different types of English test, if some, they mainly concentrate on the cloze test. Listening, which is an important skill of language competence, plays an important role in language study. It can enlarge and reinforce the language knowledge, and it is very helpful to develop the other language competence such as speaking and writing. So, it is very necessary and urgent for us to improve the students'overall English listening abilities. In the present researches on the effect of cognitive style on listening test performance are rarely seen and only stay on the surface. There are also some differences in the conclusion, some even are diametrically opposed.Take the previous findings and the limitations of the research itself into consideration, this thesis mainly has four tasks. The first task is to find out whether there exists correlation in between the Chinese college English learners, Field Independent/Dependent cognitive styles and the test-takers overall listening test scores and the sub-test scores. And if so, we will try to explore the role that test method plays in the difference of correlation results between Field Independent/Dependent cognitive styles and listening tests. Furthermore, what influences of Field Independent/Dependent cognitive styles and sex differences imposes on cognitive strategies test-takers adopt in taking listening tests will be discussed as well.The theoretical framework of this thesis is based on Bachman's model (1999) of the factors affecting test scores. In this thesis, the author adopts the quantity method and conduct an empirical study on the 70 non-English majors. The pilot test was conducted to ensure the suitableness of the formal test. And then the field independent and dependent cognitive styles test, the listening comprehension test and the cognitive strategy questionnaire were conducted. This research use statistics software EXCEL and SPSS 16.0 to collect and analyze data. The findings show that field dependent/field independent cognitive style has the remarkable relevance with the English listening test scores, and the effect of different cognitive styles on listening test performance changes across the listening test methods different cognitive style test-takers adopt different cognitive strategies. Cognitive style, sex differences and test performance do interact with each other in the progress of listening test. This thesis consists of six chapters:Chapter One mainly introduces the origin and describes the significance of the present study. In Chapter Two the author had a review of the literature on cognitive styles, the home and abroad empirical researches on the relationship between FID and language test performance. Chapter Three presents the theoretical framework of the present study. Chapter Four presents the methodology of the present study. Chapter Five demonstrates the results from the experiments. Chapter Six is the conclusion part, is draws conclusions from the major findings, and points out the major weaknesses and limitation of the present study and give suggestions the future study in this area.