A Correlational Study Of Field Dependent And Field Independent Cognitive Styles And Senior High School Students’ English Language Learning Proficiency

Since1970s, the focus of foreign language teaching has transferred from “how toteach” to “how to learn”. Educators gradually shift their focus from study teachingmethods to the study of individual’s characteristics. Cognitive style is one of the mostimportant factors in individual differences and field dependent and field independentcognitive style receive more concern from language experts. While most subjectsinvestigated are mainly university students but the study of high school students isrelatively small. The high school is an important turning point in career and Englishstudy in senior school is a key very important stage. Based on the above features, thethesis takes field dependent and field independent cognitive styles of senior highschool students as the object of the study.The thesis attempts to study the correlation between learners’ cognitive styleand their language proficiency. To identify learners’ cognitive style the author adoptsCognitive Style Figure Test and a questionnaire. The participants are238students ofthree classes of Grade Three from No.13Senior High School of Hengshui city, HebeiProvince. Their language learning proficiency is defined by College EntranceExamination of2013.The major findings are:(1)Among238participants,134belong to field dependent learners while only61belong to field independent ones. Field dependent learners obviously more than fieldindependent learners.(2) In Listening, Error Correcting and Writing, field dependent learners performbetter than field independent learners. There is significant different between the two.While in Multiple Choice and Error Correction, field independent have theiradvantages but there is no significant difference. In Close, Reading and Total score,field independent learners still have a better performance than field dependentlearners and there is significant difference between them.Finally, based on the previous findings, the author proposes pedagogicalimplications and insights concerning the practice of English teaching and learning.