A Study Of Correlation Between Field Cognitive Styles And Breadth And Depth Of Vocabulary Among Senior One Male And Female Students

Vocabulary knowledge is one of the most basic and important parts of second language acquisition.Students’ mastery of vocabulary can reflect their language level and ability to a certain extent.The breadth and depth of English vocabulary are two important components of vocabulary knowledge and are closely related to English learning.The concept of cognitive style has been a hot topic in the field of foreign language teaching in recent years,and the concept of field independent(FI)and field dependent(FD)cognitive style has attracted extensive attention from scholars at home and abroad.It is well known that learners have different learning tendencies for different type of field cognitive styles,and cognitive styles have an impact on second language acquisition.Most of previous research on correlation between field cognitive and English teaching and learning are about the aspects of reading,listening and writing,which seldom involved in vocabulary.This research aims to explore the relationship between senior one students’ field cognitive style and the breadth and depth of English vocabulary knowledge,and to explore its implications for foreign language teaching.In this research,151 senior one students from a senior high school in Guangzhou were selected as the research participants,and the field cognitive styles and vocabulary mastery of senior one students were explored by Group Embedded Figure Test(GEFT),Vocabulary Level Test(VLT)and Word Associates Test(WAT).Specifically,the following three questions were discussed:1)What is the distribution of FI/FD cognitive styles of senior one male and female students?2)What are the characteristics of breadth and depth of vocabulary of senior one male and female students?3)Is there significant correlation between FI/FD cognitive styles and breadth and depth of vocabulary among senior one male and female students? If so,which type perform better in vocabulary knowledge?Through the Descriptive analysis and Pearson Correlation analysis of the test data by SPSS,and according to the results and analysis of data discussed in Chapter Four,the answers to three research question can be concluded as following:Firstly,the number of FI learners is slightly more than FD learners.In addition,there is no significant difference between male and female students in scores of GEFT.Secondly,the level of breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge of senior one students is relatively low according to the results of VLT and WAT,and there is no significant difference between male and female students in both breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge.Moreover,there is a significant correlation between breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge of senior one students.Thirdly,there is significant correlation between FI/FD cognitive styles and breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge.To be more specific,the correlation between FI/FD cognitive styles and depth of vocabulary knowledge is more significant than the correlation between FI/FD cognitive styles and breadth of vocabulary knowledge.FI learners perform better in both breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge than FD learners among senior one students.Besides,the correlation between field cognitive styles and breadth and depth of vocabulary is not significant when correlation analyses conducted separately by gender.