Effects Of Cognitive Style On English Cooperative Learning In Middle School

Cooperative learning,which started in the United States of America in the 1970s and was adopted in many countries in the world nowadays,is a creative and effective teaching theory and strategy advocated by the new curriculum reformation and the new curriculum criteria.This strategy is based on group activities,and the teaching process is student-centered.Cooperative learning improves the interests of study and academic achievement of the students by increasing academic motivation and bettering interpersonal relationships.While in most cases,the students were divided into different learning groups according to their scores of examinations,and only investigated the effects of different grouping methods on the improvement of learning.While we were practicing the above strategy,we found that the cognitive style was very important for cooperation.Psychologically,cognitive style is the ability of individual in identifying relationship between objects,organizing the non-structural scene and re-establishing cognition.For language study,cognitive style is the manner in which a language learner approaches problems in his or her language learning process. Although related domestic studies were only started in recent years,cognitive style was highly concerned in both pedagogic and psychic fields in western and was regarded as the foundation of modern education.There are two kinds of styles:Field Independence and Field Dependence.Field Independence refers to the ability of a person to perceive a particular,relevant item or factor in a "field" of distracting items as discrete from the surrounding field as a whole.A field independent person tends to perceive things analytically,is impersonally oriented and less aware of others' interests.Field Dependence is the tendency to be "dependent" on the total field such that the parts embedded within the field are not easily perceived.A field dependent person tends to perceive globally and shows strong social orientation.Cognitive style is an important determinant of the learning efficiency and consequence.In present research,we tried to combine the cognitive styles of the students to the cooperative learning.The students of two classes of Grade Seven from Luojiashan Middle School,an ordinary school in Wuhan,were selected as testees,and were compartmentalized into field-independence homogeneous groups,field-dependence homogeneous groups and field heterogeneous groups according to their scores of Group Embedded Figure Test(GEFT),which was adopted from Beijing Normal University,and the suggestibility test and motivation test,which were designed by American psychologist Jonni L.Kincher.Both cooperative levels of the groups and cooperative levels of the members within the groups were studied,and the effects of this grouping method on the improvement of English learning were also studied according to different examinations(quiz,mid-exam and final-exam) that were given to the students. Through our study,a general model for testing the cooperative level was established.The results indicated that different groups of cognitive style were not correlated with English academic achievement,but correlated with the cooperative levels significantly.The method of dividing cooperative learning groups by cognitive styles is a good way that can be wildly used in schools.