A Study On The Correlation Between Cognitive Style Of Senior Middle School Students And The English Reading Strategies

As English reading skill serves the basis and precondition of developing other language skills,focus of language teaching and learning is always put on reading. It is stated that reading is cognitive, constructive, interactive and strategic, so that need less to say, there are many factors which influence and affect the reader’s Process of comprehending. In reading, different readers always employed various reading strategies to improve reading efficiency. The thesis tends to explore the influence of senior middle school students, field dependence-independence cognitive style upon their use of English reading strategies. Six categories reading strategies memory, cognitive, metacognitive, compensation, affective and social strategies are involved in the present study. Each category consists of several subcategories.Three research questions are addressed as(1) Are there influences of FD/Fl styles upon reading strategies?(2) What are the characteristics of the reading strategies used by different cognitive style students?(3) What should the teacher do to improve student’s ability of reading?The major findings are as follows: By studying the senior middle school students in Class 1, Class 1, Grade two of the third Middle School through questionnaire and tests, we can see that there are significant differences in the cognitive style among the students. And the significant differences influence the use of reading strategies and their reading achievements. So that is to say, cognitive style, especially the field independent cognitive styles has a greater impact on senior middle school students’ English reading.FD/I Cognitive style in the use of the reading strategies show that certain effects on reading processes. Different teaching methods need to be adopted in teaching reading according to individual differences. For example, insisting that differences in FD/I styles may mean that some strategies are more useful for one leaner than another, so teachers should take this into consideration when designing teaching material and organizing teaching activities. Seeondly, teachers adjust their teaching methods in terms of their students’ different FD/I style with the purpose of cultivating the students’ abilities to employing reading strategies by themselves and improving their reading proficiency. Learners should be treated corresponding to their own FD/I cognitive style enhancing their advantages. What’s more, they should be trained to make up for their disadvantages.