A Study On The Correlation Between Field-dependent/Independent Cognitive Styles And Elementary Oral Chinese

Aiming at studying the correlation between learners' field dependent/independent cognitive styles and their elementary oral Chinese output,sixty-nine South African secondary school students from Simon's Town School in Cape Town were taken as research objects,and the scores of two Youth Chinese Tests(hereinafter referred to as YCT)as research bases.Firstly,the secondary students' field dependent/independent cognitive styles and its distribution were studied via the Embedded Figure Test(hereinafter referred to as EFT).It is found that the amounts of field-dependent(hereinafter referred to as FD)and field-independent(hereinafter referred to as FID)learners are almost the same,while the factor of gender is insignificant in the EFT.On the base of field-dependent and field-independent two-dimension study,the study explored further and broader by dividing the objects into four sectors according to their EFT scores—strong FD,weak FD,weak FID and strong FID.It shows that the distribution of the learners is oval-shaped,namely the numbers of strong FD and strong FID students at both ends are less while the weak FD and weak FID students in the middle sectors take bigger portions.Secondly,a comparative analysis was conducted by combining the objects' EFT scores and two of their Chinese oral scores to investigate the correlation.It is found that from the perspectives of the two dimensions,FID learners obtained higher oral Chinese scores than FD learners.In other words,the learners with higher EFT scores did better in the oral tests.However,when the objects are categorized into four sectors based on their EFT scores,the scenarios are different.The ranking of the four sectors of students' scores is: strong FID>strong FD>weak FID>weak FD,which is not in direct proportion to their EFT scores.Statistically,strong FID students and strong FD students achieved better results than the weak FID and FD students.That is to say,the learners with stronger cognitive style outperformed their peers with weaker cognitive style at the same dimension in oral tests.The EFT scores were not in direct proportion to that of YCT.It was concluded that YCT score is relevant to the significance of the field cognitive styles.Thirdly,a survey on the students' learning of oral Mandarin was conducted to investigate how the learners' field cognitive styles affect their Chinese oral learning habits and communicative strategies.According to the analysis of the learners' feedback,their learning habits and strategies vary.Generally speaking,there are some similarities among the students,but more differences.Therefore,it is suggested that teachers should according to the learners' cognitive styles make accurate,detailed teaching plans and take the stratified teaching method,so as to make teaching and learning more efficient.