Cognitive Styles On Information Processing In Text Reading Of Business English

Nowadays,the researches of Business English reading focus mostly on its significance and complexity and seldom on the correlation between the cognitive style,the reading strategy and the reading ability of Business English readers,which stimulated the author's interest to investigate the internal factors affecting the business reading ability.With a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches,this study selected 50 sophomores in the researcher's school to do a reading strategies questionnaire,to take a cognitive style test and a BEC(Business English of Cambridge)reading ability test.Then,the data of the result were put into the SPSS for the descriptive statistics,one-way ANOVA and related test.After the quantitative study was finished,the 50 subjects were divided into FI(field-independent),FD(field-dependent)and FN(field-neutral)in cognitive style.Later,Five subjects were interviewed for the qualitative study: three skilled student with different cognitive style(FI/FN/FD),one unskilled FN student and one FI student with average reading ability.Their feedback of their awareness of cognitive style,the use of reading strategies and the view on their reading scores was analyzed with the data from the SPSS to find out the correlation between the cognitive style and the reading achievement.The study has some illuminating results.First,data analysis shows there is no correlation between cognitive styles and Business English reading ability.Second,there is no significant difference between cognitive styles in using the reading strategies,but the field-independent applied some reading strategies more frequently than the field-dependent.However,some field-dependent students could also get high scores though they applied reading strategies less frequently.Thirdly,there is no correlation between cognitive styles and logical reasoning ability(LR)and evaluation ability(EV),while the correlation between cognitive styles and detail identification ability(DI)is significant.And there is correlation between each other of DI,LR and EV.In conclusion,it is hoped that the findings of the study will encourage teacherswith respect for different cognitive styles to help students activate the prior knowledge and cultivate the strategic-reading ability in Business English reading.