A Study On Relations Among Cognitive Styles, Learning Strategies And Acquisition Achievements About College English Vocabulary

As important research content in Second Language Acquisition,researches into the teaching subject that language learners is the maintarget for the study of individual differences. Different learners havedifferences of different degree in cognitive styles, linguistic competence,age, gender, characteristics, personality factors and learning strategies andso on and so forth. These differences affect learning directly orindirectly. Cognitive style and learning strategy are two important featuresin learning process. And it is an important part for self-regulated learningthat learners make the appropriate adjustment according to their cognitivestyles, learning strategies. Therefore, cognitive style and learning strategyshould be given high attention both in teaching and learning. Start fromthe learner’s cognitive styles, this paper explore its influence on the choiceof vocabulary learning strategies, and help students strengthen theirawareness of learning style and vocabulary learning strategy, and thenmake learners adopt more effective foreign language vocabulary learningstrategies according their own learning styles. It is in accord with thepurpose of self-regulated learning, and in this way, it enables students tohave the aptitude and ability for lifelong learning.In the way of quantitative research, the study deals with the preferences of all subjects for cognitive styles and vocabulary learning strategies. Bystratified random sampling (according to their major, grade and gender),700 non-English major undergraduates are chosen as subjects from 7universities in Hunan. They are Hunan University, Central SouthUniversity, Changsha University of Science & Technology, HunanNormal University, Hunan City University, Hunan University ofCommerce and Hunan Agriculture University. Then, questionnaires andvocabulary test are employed to collect data about cognitive styles,learning strategies and vocabulary learning achievements. The procedureof statistical analyses is as follows: firstly, data of subjects’cognitivestyles and vocabulary learning strategies are analyzed by the way ofdescriptive statistical analyses with SPSS 18.0, so that their means andstandard deviations are gained. These statistical data may illustrate thesubjects’preferences for cognitive styles and vocabulary learningstrategies. Secondly, through one-way ANOVA and one-sample T-test，the writer explores how cognitive styles and learning strategies separatelyaffect vocabulary learning achievements. Thirdly, to probe into howcognitive styles affect the selection of vocabulary learning strategies, thewriter uses the way of Pearson Correlation Analysis to illustrate thecorrelation between cognitive styles and vocabulary learning strategies.Fourthly, Lisrel8.8 and Structural Equation Modeling are also employedto verify and analyze the relations among cognitive styles, learning strategies and vocabulary learning achievements.Results as following are achieved: there’s a significant differencebetween different levels of cognitive styles and vocabulary learningstrategies. Cognitive styles are not good or bad, but in vocabulary learningstrategies, there is a division of good and bad for metcognitive strategiesand determination strategies. Both learner’s cognitive styles andvocabulary learning strategies are the significant predictor of vocabularyacquisition achievements, and by the intermediary learning strategies,cognitive styles can make effects on vocabulary acquisition.