A Study On Relationship Between Senior High School Students’ Field Independence And Field Dependence Cognitive Styles And Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Through Reading

Incidental vocabulary acquisition(IVA)is considered to be one of the critical channels for language learners to expand their vocabulary.In recent years,It has become a hot spot in studies of incidental vocabulary acquisition in second language.In existing research,a plenty of scholars have studied the relationship between various factors and incidental vocabulary acquisition,referring to learners’ vocabulary accumulation,word frequency,reading comprehension level,and reading tasks.However,as the one of the factors of individual differences,the cognitive style is rarely involved.Very little research has addressed the relation between cognitive style and incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading.Therefore,based on previous studies,this research attempted to explore the relationship between senior high school students’ field independence and field dependence(FI and FD)cognitive styles and incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading.Based on Laufer & Hulstijin’s Involvement Load Hypothesis,Krashen’s Input Hypothesis and Craik & Lockhart’s Depth of Processing Theory,this thesis adopted quantitative and qualitative research methods,taking 120 students from a high school in Yining City as the research subjects,and carried out an empirical study on the relationship between the senior grade one students’ field independence and field dependence styles and their incidental vocabulary acquisition.The research focused on specific issues as follows.1.What’s the correlation between FI and FD cognitive styles of senior high school students and their IVA through reading?2.What are the differences between FI and FD cognitive styles of senior high school students performance on IVA through reading?3.If there is the correlation between FI and FD cognitive styles of senior high school students and their IVA through reading,is it influenced by word frequency?Through the descriptive statistical analysis,independent sample T-test,correlation analysis and two-way non-parametric ANOVA of SPSS 20.0,the results shows as follows.First,there is a significant positive correlation between FI and FD cognitive styles of senior high school students and their incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading,that is,their cognitive style will affects their IVA.Secondly,there is a significant different results between FI and FD cognitive styles of senior high school students,and FI students are better than FD ones in IVA through reading.Thirdly,word frequency have an effect on FI and FD subject’s IVA.When word frequency is 5-6,both FI and FD subjects got better results;When word frequency is1-2,FI did better than FD.Since it’s the additional data of research,it needs the further study.The results of this research are of certain practical and theoretical significance for English vocabulary teaching in senior high schools.First of all,it affirmed the role of cognitive style in IVA;Secondly,learners of different styles can achieve different results in the IVA through reading,which requires teachers to respect individual differences in cognitive styles of students in teaching and teach students in accordance with their aptitude.