International Journal of Language & Linguistics

Study of the Correlation between Field Cognitive Styles and English Reading Strategies
Xinyu Lee, Chao Wang

Abstract
Cognitive style is an individual feature that can influence one’s thinking, learning and problem-solving. Field cognitive style is the most accepted theory of all the classification of cognitive styles. With different field cognitive styles, readers tend to employ different reading strategies to understand and get information in reading, which is widely regarded as the most complicated cognitive process. Though many researchers have done similar researches, the present study focuses on students majoring in engineering at BIPT (Beijing Institute of Petrol-chemical Technology), who are adequately trained in mathematics and logic, and aims to find out whether they are more field dependent or field independent and whether there is a correlation between their field cognitive styles and preferences in reading strategy employment. Ninety students were randomly chosen from the freshmen majoring in the material engineering at BIPT to participate in the study. They are all students with an English proficiency of level B (the intermediate level based on the Entrance Level Test hosted by BIPT). The Group Embedded Figure Test (Chinese version) is employed to test the participants’ field cognitive style, and the reading strategy questionnaire is designed to find out the participants’ preferences in reading strategy employment. The descriptive statistics, independent sample t-test and Pearson product moment correlation are obtained after processing data via SPSS 24.0. The result of the study shows that there exists a certain tendency of field cognitive styles among freshmen majoring in material engineering at BIPT. A vast majority of them tend to be field independent. In addition, in this specific case, the field cognitive style does not have a significant correlation with the employment of English reading strategies. That means that the difference between students with FD and FI cognitive styles in using reading strategies is not as significant as that has been found out in previous studies. The study also reveals that FD learners are better at using social/affective reading strategies in reading.

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