Research On The Influence Of Field-dependent And Field-Independent Cognitive Styles On Foreign Language Attrition

Foreign language attrition refers to foreign language skills lost by foreign language learners after stopping learning it. Cognitive styles are one important variable influencing foreign language attrition. This study adopts a qualitative approach to investigate foreign language (English) skills lost by30non-English major seniors when they have finished the systematical college English study for16months, and the role played by field-independent and field-dependent cognitive styles in resisting language attrition and promoting language maintenance. The research questions are addressed as:(1) What are the cognitive styles of Chinese non-English major students?(2) What is the participants’English attrition like after completing the systematical college English study for16months?(3) What’s the influence of field-dependent and field-independent cognitive styles on foreign language attrition?Two instruments are used in the present study. The cognitive styles of the subjects are measured through the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT). And College English Test Bend Four (CET-4), as an English proficiency test, is applied to inspect whether the subjects suffer from English attrition and the attrition rate. Through the analysis of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences16.0(SPSS16.0), the major findings are as follows:(1) With respect to the distribution of cognitive styles among Chinese non-English major senior students, the leading one is field-independent cognitive style while the subordinate one is field-dependent cognitive style.(2) As regards the occurrence and degree of attrition, college non-English major seniors’foreign language (English) has undergone remarkable attrition both in general and at specific levels. As far as the specific language proficiencies are concerned, writing and translation have undergone the heaviest loss. The maintenance of listening comprehension skills is something in between:better than that of writing and translation but worse than that of reading comprehension and cloze.(3) By contrast, students with FD are better at listening, whereas students with FI are better at cloze, writing and translation. FI learners get higher marks before attrition. On the contrary, FD learners are better after without learning English for16months. Therefore, FD learners are comparatively better at the retention of EFL proficiency than FI counterparts. However, there is no significant difference of the attrition of English proficiency between two styles. The participants’cognitive styles correlate with their English attrition positively in general, but the correlation is not significantly eminent.The present study shows that field-independent and field-dependent cognitive styles have some slight influence on foreign language (English) attrition. In accordance with the result in this investigation, the author offers some suggestions for resisting language attrition, hoping to be valuable for college English learning and teaching.