Research On The Correlation Between Field Cognitive Style And English Writing Strategies Of Senior High School Students

The Chinese English Curriculum Standards for General High School(2017)points out that the curriculum content is composed of six elements: subject context,discourse,language knowledge,cultural knowledge,language skills and learning strategies,in which students are required to describe the specific content of "listening,speaking,reading,watching and writing" as well as the training requirements of micro-skills in the training process.Cognitive style is an important criterion to measure the individual differences of students.Writing is a creative language output skill for students’ language acquisition.Students with different cognitive styles usually have different characteristics in their studies.This study investigates the correlation between field cognitive styles and English strategies in order to better implement individualized teaching and ultimately achieve the improvement and development of students with different cognitive styles.Based on Witkin’s theory of psychological differentiation and the theory of language learning strategies,this study investigated 180 high school students in Peng Shui No.1Middle School of Chongqing by means of questionnaire survey and interview.The field cognitive style questionnaire is designed on the basis of the description of field dependency/field independence features by Witkin,Moore,Goodenough and Cox.The questionnaire consisted of 30 items,which were divided into two parts: 15 characteristics of field-dependent learners and 15 characteristics of field-independent learners.The English learning strategies Questionnaire is a survey of high school students’ English writing strategies by using the writing strategies questionnaire of O’Malley and Chamot.There are 25 items in the questionnaire,including three dimensions(meta-cognitive strategies,cognitive strategies,and social-affective strategies).After completing the questionnaire analysis,the author selected 6 typical field independents and field dependents from the subjects for interviews to further understand the reasons for the use of English writing strategies in high school students with different field cognitive styles.This study focuses on the following three questions:(1)What about the overall situation of senior high school students’ field cognitive style?(2)What about the overall use of senior high school students’ English writing strategies and their dimensions?(3)Is there a correlation between senior high school students’ field cognitive style and English writing strategies? If so,how relevant?The results show that:(1)Generally speaking,senior high school students tend to be field independent.Specifically,83 students were field dependent,accounting for 46%;90students are field independent,accounting for 50%;Seven students were field-mixed,accounting for 4% of the total number.(2)The frequency of English writing strategies used by senior high school students is medium,among which cognitive strategies are the most commonly used,followed by meta-cognitive strategies,and finally social-affective strategies.(3)There is a significant positive correlation between senior high school students’ field cognitive style and English writing strategies,but it has a weak correlation with social-affective strategies.(4)Interviews shows that high school students use writing strategies to some extent,but most students’ understanding of writing strategies mainly comes from teachers,and students’ understanding of writing strategies has not yet formed a complete system.On the basis of the analysis of the survey results,some feasible suggestions are put forward for English teachers and students in order to better implement personalized English teaching and finally help to promote the development of students’ personality.Teachers should have a clear understanding of the differences in students’ cognitive styles and teach students in accordance with their aptitude according to their different cognitive styles;When teachers are teaching writing,teachers should not only pay attention to the match between them,but also pay attention to the mismatch between them.Finally,Teachers should actively create diversified classrooms and optimize teaching design.For students,they should actively change their learning styles in different learning environments and learn from each other.Due to the inadequacy of the author’s research level and experience,some shortcomings are inevitable.There is no superior or inferior of cognitive style,cognitive style are not absolute,In order to have a more comprehensive understanding of students’ English writing strategies,future studies can consider starting from multiple dimensions,so it is necessary for the questionnaire to cover more content.