An Investigation Of The Relationship Between Field Dependence/Independence And High School Students’ English Writing Performance

Among multiple methods to research SLA, there are two main lines: one is to studythe common features during the process of SLA, the other is to explore the individualdifferences among learners in order to investigate the influences of language learners’individual differences towards their language proficiency. Cognitive style, as one of themain factors of individual differences on SLA, which is given great attention since1950s.Researches on the influences of field dependence/independence (FD/I) cognitive styletowards language learning is one of the hot issues. However, different researchers havedifferent findings in their own studies. Some researchers think that cognitive style is relatedto students’ English academic performance, while others think that cognitive style will resultin the difference in several aspects, such as reading or writing, but cognitive style is notrelated to English academic performance as a whole.The concepts of FD and FI, which were firstly presented by Herman Witkin, are used toapply to the researches on cognitive style or learning style. According to Witkin (1977),when presented distinguish figures as a dominated field, the more field independent tend todiscrete from their backgrounds and restructure perceived information into a differentframework, whereas field dependent individuals who have a tendency to experience eventsin an undifferentiated way. That is to say, field independent individuals are not easilyinfluenced by the external environment or the opinions of others and show greater interestand ability in the abstract and impersonalizing aspect of all types of behaviors and theexternal environment. On the contrary, field dependent individuals are easily influenced bythe external environment and the opinions of the others people and have the comparativeadvantages in the personalizing and socializing aspects. They tend to consider the externalenvironment as a whole.The present research attempts to investigate the relationship between field dependence/independence cognitive style and high school students’ English writing performance.Specifically, the following there purposes are to be achieved:(1) to discover the distribution of students’ field dependence/independence in high school;(2)to investigate the relationshipbetween field dependence/independence and high school students’ English writingperformance;(3)to draw some pedagogical suggestions concerning the application of theresearch findings in high school English writing teaching and learning.In this study,200high school students from Guangzhou Foreign Language School andTanba Middle School of Wuchuan are chosen as subjects. Students’FD/I cognitive style aremeasured by the Test Embedded Figures (TEF) which is complied by PsychologyDepartment of Beijing Normal University. And their English writing performance aresurveyed by their English midterm-exam test. The relationship between FD/I and Englishwriting performance is examined through the Service Pack of Social Statistics software(SPSS).Based on the analysis of the collected data in this experiment, the main findings of thisstudy are as follows:(1)Most of high school students are tending to be field independent.(2)High school students FD/I is positively related to their writing performance, whilethere is no significant difference between students’ FD/I and their writing performance.This research aims to apply the research findings to English writing teaching andlearning so as to raise teachers’ and students’ awareness of FD/I and encourage students toadjust their FD/I properly, which can finally improve the English teaching and learningefficiency in high school.