An Analysis Of Correlation Between Cognitive Style And Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

Acquiring L2 words through reading has always been considered as a useful vocabulary strategy. It is also an extensively researched topic in the field of second language acquisition. Despite the fact that a series of studies have researched the factors which influence the incidental vocabulary acquisition, such as learning task, topic familiarity, lexical modification and content schema, etc, the factor of learners'cognitive style is largely neglected.The present study investigates the correlation between cognitive style and incidental vocabulary acquisition, and tries to give out some suggestions on college teaching and learning. In this study, a questionnaire survey and a test are the primary means. The subjects are 164 non-English majors in science in Guangxi Normal University. The survey instruments include a field-independent/dependent style checklist and two vocabulary tests. The subjects are asked to indicate their cognitive style preferences by using the checklist from Violand-Sánchez, and knowledge gains of the target words are measured by the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale from Paribakht & Wesche.The three research questions of the present study are addressed as follows:1. How is the whole picture of cognitive style of non-English majors in science?2. How is these students'incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading?3. Is there any correlation between their cognitive style preferences and the performance in incidental vocabulary acquisition? How are they related each other?Findings of this study can be summarized as follows:1. The overall preference of non-English majors in science is FI style.2. The subjects do acquire at least some knowledge of the target words through reading.3. The subjects'knowledge gains in vocabulary test correlate moderately with their cognitive style preferences (R=.439, p<.01)The thesis gives out some suggestions on college English teaching of non-English majors in science: 1. Teachers should arouse awareness of students'individual differences, such as, their FD/FI differences especially.2. Teachers should encourage students to acquire the vocabularies incidentally through large readings.3. Teachers should instruct the students with good strategies for vocabulary learning.4. Teachers should combine all the vocabulary teaching methods and output each respectively according to the reaction of the students.5. Teachers should make a point of exposing students to enough comprehensible input according to students'needs and personal interests.6. Teachers should apply"Depth of Processing Hypothesis"to students'good vocabulary retention.7. Students should know well about their cognitive style preferences and their levels of vocabulary acquisition.8. Students should read more suitable materials so as to acquire great vocabularies.