| Fifty years ago, Witkin (1948) discovered that individual differences in the effects of visual cues are not merely errors of method, but that people show remarkable consistency in degree of field dependence on tests of orientation perception (Goodenough, 1986). After the concept has been proposed, Witkin has devised various methods to measure FDI degree, among them the Group Embedded Figure Test (GEFT) is the most famous but controversial method. During its later development,the FDI theory has been improved by Chapelle and Green with their new interpretation. But their research is far from being perfect. Other researchers also make efforts in this field, but their findings are inconsistent and controversial. It is for this reason that the paper aims to give a comprehensive understanding and carry out a further research on the cognitive style field dependence-independence (FDI) and tries to combine the findings with Chinese students' ESL learning to explore its influence upon ESL learning in China. In chapter one, the paper mainly introduces the reasons for choosing such a topic as FDI cognitive style. Firstly, FDI, as a cognitive style, plays an important role in students' second language learning. Findings concerning this topic are various and they all prove that FDI is quite important in influencing, if we cannot say deciding, the students' learning process and result. Secondly, the fact that so many papers on FDI have been published has also proved that FDI is quite a complicated yet important topic for our discussion. So many researchers make efforts on this aspect and lots of papers concerning this aspect have been published each year. Nowadays, the topic FDI is not so popular as some years ago. But there must be some reasons for its widespread research in those years and its relative decline recently. This is one of the most important reasons that stimulated me to make an exploration and research in this field. Thirdly, I find findings in this field are not consistent and researchers always disagree with each other for some reasons, and this makes research on FDI seem quite challenging. It is for these reasons that I finally decided to choose FDI research as the topic of my paper though it seems to be a little bit outdated and controversial. Chapter 2 is about the literature review. Firstly, the origin and development of FDI research has been generally discussed. FDI, as a cognitive construct, was originally proposed and developed by Herman Witkin in mainstream psychology. At that time, he defined field dependence independence(FDI)as the extent to which a person perceives part of a field as discrete from the surrounding field as a whole, or, to put it into everyday terms, the extent to which a person perceives analytically. There are positive and negative characteristics of both field independence and field dependence. After fiddling with a perception test using rods and frames, Witkin finally developed the GEFT to determine the degree of field dependence or independence we each possess. However, his concept and method have met serious challenges. People think his FDI style is actually a kind of ability instead of style. It is on this base that Chapelle and Green proposed their new interpretation of FDI—the three-component model which consists of internal vs. external reference, restructuring ability and interpersonal competence. Apart from the origin and development of FDI research, this part also reviews the present researching situation of FDI by checking the main research methods and educational implication worked out by other researchers. Secondly, research on learning styles and cognitive styles, the most closely related concepts of FDI, has been roughly reviewed here, and this part mainly includes the definition or understanding and the origin and researching development of learning styles and cognitive styles. The purpose of our description here is to offer additional information for our further perception of FDI, for FDI is a kind of cognitive style and learning style. Thirdly, br...
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