| In English learning,English reading is not only one of English four basic skills,but also a way for learners to acquire English.The external situations and individual differences of learners have an great effect on learners' reading proficiency.Working memory is the process of temporarily storing and processing information and its capacity is limited.Field independence and field-dependence,as a significant dimension of cognitive styles,represent two different ways of processing information.Most previous findings have investigated the effects of one of two factors.However,a few scholars have conducted the research on the correlations among the working memory,field-independent/field-dependent cognitive styles and English reading achievements.Research questions are states as follows:1)Is learner's FI/FD cognitive style related to their EFL reading achievement? If yes,what's the correlation between FI/FD cognitive styles and EFL reading achievement? Do FI/FD cognitive styles bear significant gender,major and family background differences?2)Is learner's working memory capacity related to their EFL reading achievement? If yes,what's the correlation between learners' working memory capacity and EFL reading achievement?3)Does working memory capacity interact with FI/FD cognitive styles in influencing learners' EFL reading achievement ?The author selects 80 freshmen consisting of 40 students majoring in polymeric materials and engineering and 40 financial management as subjects from Taiyuan Institute of Technology to finish questionnaires and tests.The valid questionnaires are 68.The author employs group embedded figures test,reading span test and reading rest covering four passages from CET-4.After collecting questionnaires and tests,statistics are put into SPSS 17.0 software to analyze results.Descriptive analysis,Independent simple-test,Pearson correlation analysis and Multi-ANOVA analysis are employed to conclude the following research results.(1)FI/FD cognitive style is positively correlated with learners' English learning achievements.There exists a significant difference between FI and FD in reading achievements.Compared with FD learners,FI learners perform much better in reading achievement.There is no significant difference between males and females and students from different family background in the field of FI/FD cognitive style.There exists a significant difference between arts students andscience students in the field of FI/FD cognitive styles.Science students belong to FI cognitive style while arts students are considered as FD learners.(2)Working memory capacity of learners is positively correlated with their reading achievements.Learners with different levels of working memory capacity perform differently in reading comprehension performance.Learners with high working memory capacity outperform those with low working memory capacity in reading comprehension performance.(3)There is a significant interaction effect between working memory capacity and FI/FD cognitive styles on the subjects' reading achievements.FI/FD cognitive styles are prone to have higher impact on high working memory capacity group than on low working memory capacity group.FI learners with high working memory capacity score higher while FD learners with high working memory capacity perform poorly.However,learners with low working memory capacity are uninfluenced by FI/FD cognitive styles in their reading achievements.In a word,the results show learners' reading performance is constrained by working memory capacity and FI/FD cognitive styles.Different FI/FD cognitive styles have different impacts on learners' different levels of working memory capacity.In the teaching process,it's crucial for teachers to help learners know their FI/FD cognitive styles and the level of working memory capacity.Teachers should put forward targeted advice for different learners so as to improve learners' reading proficiency. |
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