Correlation Between Senior High School Students' Cognitive Styles And English Vocabulary Learning Strategies

Cognitive style is a psychological concept that has been applied more and more extensively in the field of Second Language Acquisition and foreign language teaching and learning.Cognitive style and learning strategy are two important individual features that may have impact on learning effects in learning process,researchers have conducted studies on the relationship between these two factors from different perspectives.Vocabulary is vital to language learning;however,senior high school students have difficulty in memorizing a plenty of vocabulary,the large amount of vocabulary means a great challenge for those who have poor efficiency in vocabulary learning.Thus,this research tries to investigate the characteristics of senior high school students' cognitive styles and vocabulary learning strategies,to explore the relationship between these two factors.Based on the research results,implications for vocabulary teaching and learning are suggested in the paper.In this research,50 senior one students are selected as subjects and quantitative research method is adopted.The instruments used for data collection are two questionnaires,SPSS 22 software is used to do statistical analysis.Questionnaire of cognitive style adopts the classification proposed by Riding,questionnaire of vocabulary learning strategy adopts the scale developed by Schmitt,combining deletion on several items which are not applicable in Chinese situation and not common methods for senior high school students in China.This study is going to solve the following questions:(1)What are the main characteristics of senior high school students' cognitive styles?(2)What are the main characteristics of senior high school students' vocabulary learning strategies?(3)What's the correlation between senior high school students' cognitive styles and their vocabulary learning strategies?The research results show that:(1)Senior high school students' main characteristics of cognitive style are Visual,Reflective,Field Dependent and Sequential;(2)Senior high school students prefer to use Cognitive Strategy,Determination Strategy,Memory Strategy and using less Social Strategy and Meta-cognitive Strategy in vocabulary learning;(3)There exists significant correlations between senior high school students' cognitive styles and most of the vocabulary learning strategies.Students with different cognitive styles have different preferences for vocabulary learning strategies.Reflective style is the most influential cognitive style for senior high school students' choices of vocabulary learning strategies.This research investigates the main characteristics of senior high school students' cognitive styles and vocabulary learning strategies and studies the relationship between these two factors.Based on the research findings,this paper attempts to help senior high school students establish their awareness of cognitive style and multiple vocabulary learning strategies,help them be clear about the advantages and disadvantages of own cognitive styles,urge them to make full use of the advantages,meanwhile,help them overcome the disadvantages that do not fit in learning tasks.Vocabulary teaching methods based on cognitive style theory reflect the student-centered teaching concept that respects individual differences and attaches importance to individual needs,which is advocated in Activity Theory of Learning in the New English Curriculum Standard of General High School.