Influence Of Field Independent/Dependent Cognitive Style On HVTC Students' English Listening And Speaking Competence

The HVTC English Curriculum Requirements made by Department of Higher Education of China states that Higher Vocational Technical English teaching should be training students'ability to use the language, thus emphasizing the practicality and pertinence of teaching contents. Therefore, in the recent years, the focus of English teaching in HVTC has shifted from knowledge teaching to competence development, especially the development of listening and speaking competence, which is very important for students'prospective work. Hence, how to improve students'listening and speaking competence becomes a thorny problem for English teachers in HVTC. A lot of English teachers have made great efforts to do researches on this. However, most of them ignore individual differences-students'different cognitive learning styles. Therefore it is worthwhile to do research on the influence of field independent/dependent cognitive style on the HVTC students'English listening and speaking competence.This thesis will give a comprehensive analysis of (i) field independence and field dependence; (ii)whether field dependence is positively correlated with speaking competence for HVTC students, and field independence is positively correlated with listening competence for HVTC students; (iii) whether field independence/dependence has effects on HVTC students'English listening and speaking achievement; (iv) whether teachers adopt different teaching methods for different cognitive style students; (v) how to give an effective English class for field independent/dependent students to improve their listening and speaking competence.Through the study, the following major findings are generated:Firstly, HVTC students are field independent with mature cognitive ability.Secondly, HVTC students'cognitive learning style influences their listening and speaking performance.Thirdly, there is a clear relationship between students'listening and speaking performance and their employment of listening and speaking strategies.Finally, special teaching method aiming at the students with different cognitive styles can achieve good teaching effects.The thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter One is the introduction, beginning with a general introduction of the research background of the present study, followed by the research objectives, the significance and the organization of the thesis.Chapter Two is literature review about previous studies on FI/FD in SLA, which focuses on the concept, characteristics, assessment, affecting factors and related researches Of FI/FD.Chapter Three is an empirical study consisting of the research purposes, hypotheses, subjects, instruments, procedures and data collection.Chapter Four is the results of the data collected followed by the discussion of the results. Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) 13.0 is used to analyze the data got from the tests to find the correlations and descriptive statistics of the listening and speaking scores from PETS and the score from CSFT to testify the hypotheses. And it mainly discusses the influence of FI/FD on listening and speaking, the influence of teaching method on field independent/dependent students, and the teaching guideline for teaching field independent/dependent students.Chapter Five draws a conclusion, presenting a summary of the major findings of the study, the implication of the research for teaching and learning style. Proposal for further study is also presented in this chapter.