The Influence Of Field Dependent/Independent Cognitive Styles On High School Students' English Reading And Writing

Reading and writing are two prominent skills among four basic skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing in the interactive process of language teaching and learning. The former provides important and sufficient linguistic input for language learners. It is a major way in which English language learners acquire new information and it is also a very important part in the National Matriculation English Test (NMET). The latter is an important part of language output, but the recent reports on NMET show that it is probably the weakest part of English language learning in high schools and the average score of this part is low. Cognitive styles are the general, broad approaches used to learn experience and gain information. They reveal the individuals'mode of responding and functioning in a variety of situations. And field dependent/independent cognitive style (FI/FD), introduced by the famous American psychologist Witkin, refers to the extension of a person's tendency to perceive the environment in the cognitive activities. In the past years, the study of FI/FD has become a hot issue in linguistics research. In the process of reading and writing, many factors have an effect on the learner's coping or interpreting with information,such as motivation , intelligence and so on. The research attempts to work out how field independent/dependent cognitive style influences English reading and writing among high school students, in the perspective of strategy application and reading as well as writing test results.The author bases the study on questionnaires and tests. The procedure is as following: the test with an eight-passage reading comprehension and a writing assignment the two sets of strategy questionnaire the closed questionnaire plus the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) for cognitive style.The subjects are 60 Grade Three students at the No. 1Middle School. The data, gained from the questionnaires and tests, was collected and analyzed. Three main statistical instruments from SPSS13.0 were used: cluster analysis, descriptive analysis, and correlation analysis. The study produced the following major findings:First, through the conducted data, the results show that different distribution in FI/FD does exist in the high school students. Twelve students belong to the field-independent group, twenty-nine students belong to the comprehensive group,and nineteen students students fall into the field-dependent group respectively.Second, a significant relationship is found between field dependent/independent cognitive style and strategy application in reading and writing. The FI students tend to use five of the group strategies more frequently: metacognitive, cognitive, memory, compensation strategies and affective strategies. They also adopt more frequently the specific strategies in reading, such as using formulas and patterns, guessing the meaning of what is read in the new language and using clues to guess the meaning. And in writing, some specific strategies are more frequently adopted by the FI students too, for instance, mental associating, using discourse connectives, adjusting or approximating the message, using circumlocution or synonym and evaluating strategy. However, the FD students are more reliant on social strategies and tend to use the specific strategy of talking about their feelings or attitudes with others.Third, the FI cognitive style is positively correlated with the students'reading and writing achievements. The FI students achieve relatively higher scores in both the reading test and writing test than the comprehensive and the FD students.The findings of the present study have pedagogical implications in English reading and writing in high schools. First, it reveals that FI/FD cognitive style does exert its influence on reading and writing, proving that the differences in cognitive styles can affect the process and the efficiency of learning. Thus, language teaching approaches should be appropriate and flexible according to actual situations. Second, according to the characteristics of FI/FD, teachers can adapt different kinds of teaching methodologies orientating students'different cognitive styles. Finally, the research is beneficial for the English teachers in high schools to provide learning activities according to the students'different cognitive styles in order to develop strategy autonomy and improve their reading and writing abilities. And teachers should encourage students to integrate and develop modes of learning while they are refining their preferred cognitive style.