| Acquiring vocabulary incidentally through extensive reading is one of the important ways for learners to enlarge their vocabulary. Incidental vocabulary acquisition is also an extensively researched topic in the field of second language acquisition. Although many researchers have investigated the factors which influence the incidental vocabulary acquisition, such as learning task, context clues, topic familiarity, vocabulary size, and so on. However, the factor of learners’ cognitive style is largely neglected by many researchers.The present study investigates the correlation between cognitive style and incidental vocabulary acquisition among English major sophomores, and aims at giving out some suggestions on college teaching and learning. In this study, a questionnaire survey and a test are the primary means. The subjects are112English majors in Hubei University. The survey instruments include a field-independent/dependent style checklist and two vocabulary tests. The subjects are asked to indicate their cognitive style preferences by using the checklist from Viol and-Sanchez, and knowledge gains of the target words are measured by the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale from Paribakht&Wesche.The research results indicate that the overall preference of English majors is FI style and they do acquire at least some knowledge of the target words through reading. Besides, the subjects’knowledge gains in vocabulary test correlate moderately with their cognitive style preferences(R=.458, p<01).The findings have both theoretical and pedagogical implications. First, they have confirmed the effects of cognitive style on language learning process, which shows that individual difference in cognitive style has certain effects on the vocabulary learning. Second, they are beneficial for the Chinese English teachers to encourage students to carry out a large amount of extensive reading in order to improve their vocabulary growth. |
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