| English learners must have a basic mastery of English in listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translation. Among these five abilities, reading ability is of major significance. It not only provides language input for English learners, but also makes an important part of various English tests, such as CET-4and CET-6, TEM-4and TEM-8. Therefore, English learners should pay special attention to English reading. Abundant practices have demonstrated that strengthening reading practice helps English learners enlarge vocabulary, enhance knowledge, broaden cultural background, improve language sense and sharpen logical thinking ability so as to facilitate the four other basic skills. So promoting reading ability is an essential and effective way of improving English for English learners in China, especially for college students. After a general analysis of the results of CET-4and CET-6in the past three years, the author finds out that students with equal test results show a sensible difference in their English reading. According to Herman Witkin’s theory, cognitive styles can be divided into two major categories: FI (field independence) and FD (field dependence). Learners with different cognitive styles are inclined to take different learning strategies in their language learning.There are quite a few correlation researches on cognitive styles and learning results at home and abroad, whereas researches on cognitive styles and reading results of English learners are relatively scarce and the conclusions are not completely identical. Therefore, the author hopes to find out the relatively precise relationship between cognitive styles and reading results, and how different reading strategies which are caused by different cognitive styles influence reading abilities, thus to provide some instructions for the teaching of English reading.This thesis aims to investigate and study the following questions:1. Is it true that male students are more likely to be field-independent than female students?2. What reading strategy do students with different cognitive styles prefer to take? 3. How are students’reading ability influenced by different cognitive styles?4. Which main factors may influence reading strategy? What are the countermeasures?The subjects are60students from Chuzhou University. Those students are divided into the following two groups:English majors and non-English majors. Members from the group of English majors are30undergraduates from Grade2012, School of Foreign Languages (15boys,15girls), while members in the group of non-English majors are30students from other departments who passed TEM-6in June,2013(15boys,15girls).The author separates participants into the group of English majors and the group of non-English majors. In the professional cognitive style test (Group Embedded Figure Test), the author ventures to subdivide cognitive styles into three major categories and adopts the descriptive analysis function of SPSS (Statistical Product and Service Solutions) to clarify cognitive styles among all participants, gathers each participant’s reading result through a reading comprehension test, and collects relative data through a survey on reading strategy and examination paper traces. The divergence analysis function of SPSS (Statistical Product and Service Solutions) will be respectively applied among group of English majors and group of non-English majors so as to find out the relationship between different cognitive styles and reading proficiency, the relationship between different cognitive styles and meta-cognitive strategy, the relationship between different cognitive styles and cognitive strategy, and the relationship between different cognitive styles and social affective strategy.The conclusions are as follows:1. FI, FD and mixed style(field-independent students and field-dependent students with scores close to the average value) do exist among the subjects according to the results of GEFT(Group Embedded Figure Test) and the average score of female students is higher than that of the male students in the group of English majors, which indicates that there are more field-independents in the female students, and this result is closely related to the special characteristics of English majors; average score of male students is higher than that of female students in the group of non-English majors, which indicates that there are more field-independents in the male students, and this result is basically identical with the findings of Herman Witkin’s research;2. FD students are more inclined to social/emotional strategy, while FI students are better at cognitive strategy and meta-cognitive strategy, and students with mixed cognitive style apply both at the same time;3.While comparing cognitive styles and scores from the reading comprehension test, the author finds out that there is certain connection between them, that is:though high scores distribute among students of different cognitive styles, students with mixed styles have certain advantages in reading speed and average reading scores;4. Through the research, the author finds out that students with similar English proficiency prefer different reading strategies under the influence of different cognitive styles, and this discrepancy would lead to different reading results.The author holds the view that cognitive styles do exert some effect on the selection of reading strategies, and reading strategy influences reading proficiency profoundly. However, cognitive style is relatively stable; that is to say, it is not easy to change. In order to improve reading proficiency of English learners, more importance must be attached to the selection and application of reading strategies, and students with different cognitive styles should be trained to learn and apply unfamiliar reading strategies. On this basis, the author attempts to present the following teaching suggestions:1. Teachers should take the initiative in studying students’ cognitive styles and making teaching plans in accordance with different characteristics of different cognitive styles;2.Students should develop the sense of scientific study and cooperate with teachers actively, so as to read and learn in line with their cognitive styles. |
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