认知风格与附带词汇习得的实证研究-英语论文.doc

认知风格与附带词汇习得的实证性研究-英语论文认知风格与附带词汇习得的实证性研究ABSTRACTKEY WORDS：cognitive style, field independence, ambiguity tolerance, incidental vocabulary acquisition Incidental vocabulary acquisition (IVA), which occurs without the specific intent to focus on vocabulary, has been shown to be an effective way of learning word meanings from context (Nagy, et al., 1985; Day, 1991; Joe, 1995; Coady, 1997). In the psychological literature, numerous experiments have been conducted to verify the fact that incidental learning plays an important role in students second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition. For example, Nagy, Herman, and Anderson (1985) conclude from their own experimental study that children indeed do learn large numbers of words by means of incidental learning from written context. Dupuy and Krashen (1992) also found in the research that the learners who participated in reading and watching a film in class acquired approximated 5 to 10 words per hour through incidental learning from a text.However, there are still many unsettled questions about IVA. Some scholars point out that IVA is very complex and there are many factors that may affect the outcome. A large number of studies have been conducted to address these factors, which include richness of context clues, learning task, exposure frequency of new words, learner factors, including learners cognitive style, vocabulary size, cultural background, motivation, etc. Many empirical studies explored the effect of these factors on incidental vocabulary acquisition. For example, Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) examined the influence of different reading task on acquisition. Knight (1984) investigated the influence of dictionary use on students vocabulary inference and retention. Mondria and Boer (1991) analyzed the positive role of contextual clues in incidental vocabulary acquisition. However, the factor of learners cognitive style is largely neglected.Many psychologist and educators believed that peoples successes and failures in learning a second language have much to do with individual differences in ability. In the past few decades, investigators made extensive researches on the roles of individual differences such as intelligence, cognitive style, and personality on human behavior. As a result, the main academic focus in education had shifted from the concerns for instructors and teaching approaches to that for learners and their individual differences since 1960s. Now there are a considerable number of studies that have investigated the relationship between cognitive styles and L2 learning achievements. All of studies on cognitive studies were done from various perspectives, and the current study focuses on the studies on field dependence/independence (FD/I) and ambiguity tolerance/intolerance (AT/I). There are also numerous studies on the influence of these two facets of cognitive style on language acquisition from different aspects such as listening, reading, cloze and grammar learning. However, a very important area vocabulary acquisition has been largely ignored. Especially, to date, there is no study specifically addressing the relationship between cognitive style and IVA. The present study, with the aim to explore the relationship between IVA and cognitive style, will hopefully contribute to the theoretical study and teaching practice in the following ways:Firstly, there has been a longstanding debate about the relative effectiveness of intentional vocabulary acquisition and incidental vocabulary acquisition. Represented by Krashen (1989), the indirect group advocates that vocabulary should be acquired in an indirect way to facilitate their use in real communication. Learning words incidentally through extensive reading is a typical way of indirect learning. On the contrary, the direct group, including Beck, McKeown and McCaslin (1983), insists direct vocabulary learning is the most important way for vocabulary learning since indirect vocabulary learning is not reliable and some learners gain little from reading. This debate has continued for about two decades and has not been solved yet, partly because each group can present some convincing evidence that there are learners who can learn vocabulary very well in either a direct or an indirect way. However, if we consider this problem from the cognitive perspective, we may find that learners vocabulary learning approach tendency may due to their different cognitive styles. One approach may accord with one cognitive style, but not with the other. An investigation of the influence of cognitive style on incidental vocabulary acquisition will shed light on this problem and help to solve the debate.Furthermore, the study will help EFL/ESL (English as a foreign/second language) learners to identify their cognitive style preferences in order to maximize their vocabulary acquisition achievements. Cognitive styles differs a lot between different learners, therefore it is of considerable importance to maximize the advantages and to minimize the disadvantages of individual cognitive styles, so as to facilitate the efficiency of incidental vocabulary acquisition. The findings of the study also help teachers to give students a good guidance on their vocabulary learning activities. In order to understand the relationship between cognitive style and incidental vocabulary acquisition, the author has designed an experiment to establish the relationship between the students FD/I, AT/I and their performance of IVA. To be more specific, this study attempts to answer the following questions:1) What is the relationship between the students FD/I cognitive style and their performance on IVA?2) What is the relationship between the students AT/I cognitive style and their performance on IVA?3) Are there any differences in FD/I and AT/I between effective and ineffective learners?The intended outcome of Question 1 is to find out the correlative relationship between students FD/I and IVA, that is, whether their FD/I influence their performance on IVA. Similarly, the intended outcome of Question 2 is to find out whether students AT/I cognitive style has an effect on their performance on IVA. And the intended outcome of Question 3 is to find out whether there are any differences in students cognitive style between effective and ineffective learners according to their scores on IVA.关 键 词：认知方式，场独立，歧义容忍度，附带词汇习得在阅读过程中附带地习得词汇是学习者扩大词汇量的一个重要方式，这也是二语习得领域一个广泛研究的课题。然而，关于附带词汇习得还有许多未解决的难题。一些学者指出，词汇的附带习得是一个复杂的过程，它的发生受到很多因素的制约，如学习任务、语境线索、原文请找 学习者的词汇量、猜词能力以及认知风格等。尽管有许多关于这些因素的研究，但认知风格对附带词汇习得的影响却没有引起人们的关注。本文从场认知和歧义容忍度两个纬度对学习者的认知方式进行分析,探讨了英语学习者的认知方式与词汇附带习得的相关关系，同时还探讨了高效词汇习得者和低效词汇习得者在认知方式上的差异。全文共有五部分组成：第一部分介绍了本项研究的目的和意义；第二部分介绍了认知风格和词汇附带习得的研究现状及理论基础；第三部分详细介绍了本项研究中受试，测试工具和研究步骤等情况；第四部分报告了数据统计分析的结果及相关的讨论；最后一部分得出结论，并提出本研究对理论研究与教学的启示意义，同时指出本研究的不足及对今后研究的建议。来自河南科技大学120名非英语专业学生参加了这次调查，受试接受了关于认知风格的问卷调查和两次阅读后的词汇测试。通过对收集的数据进行分析，结果发现，场独立和高歧义容忍度与受试习得词汇的数量具有显著的相关性，高效词汇习得者与低效词汇习得者在场独立和歧义容忍认知方式上存在显著差异。本研究的结果对中国的英语词汇教学具有一定的理论和实践意义。首先，它肯定了认知方式在附带词汇习得中的作用，说明语言学习者在认知方式上的个体差异对语言学习过程有一定的影响。其次，它有利于中国英语教师鼓励学生进行大量的课外阅读以扩大词汇量。1430认知风格与附带词汇习得的实证性研究The subjects of this study were non-English major freshmen from Henan University of Science and Technology. To ensure that the subjects have the similar language proficiency, a vocabulary size test was firstly carried out for placement. 235 students in six classes took part in the Vocabulary Levels Test. They came from three different major, that is, computer, international trade and electronic information. They were then classified into two levels of groups according to their scores. 125 students whose scores are above the average score belong to the high level group, while 110 students below the average score belong to the low level group. Students from the high level group are chosen as the subjects in this study. All the subjects were native speakers of Chinese and also learners of English as a foreign language. The subjects included 72 males and 53 females, aging from 18 to 22.The study was conducted over a period of 4 weeks. In the first week, CSFT and SLTAT were administered to subjects to assess their field sensitivity and degree of ambiguity tolerance. In the second week, the treatment was conducted. Firstly, the reading materials on separate paper were handed out, the subjects were told to read the story just for pleasure, but not permitted to refer to the dictionary or other students. Immediately after the collecting of the last sheet, an unexpected vocabulary test of 12 target words was administered. The test lasted for ten minutes. Subjects were told not to look up the words in a dictionary or discuss with classmates during or after the test. Two weeks later, the delayed post-test was administered to the subjects. The two-week interval was set with the purpose of reducing subjects impression of the tested words, to ensure that the gain of word knowledge attributed to the treatment. The format was similar to that of immediate post-test, but the word order was different. The time for the test was also ten minutes. The delayed post-test papers were scored in the same way as the immediate post-test papers.The collected questionnaires and vocabulary testing papers were marked and carefully checked. Out of the 125 subjects, 5 were excluded from analyses because they didnt complete all the tests, thus leaving a total number of 120 subjects. All the data and scores were then put into computer and analyzed with the SPSS 12.0 statistics software package.On the basis of the data analysis, we draw the following conclusions:1) The examination of the 120 subjects scores of FD/I and IVA reveals that there is a significant and positive correlation between students FD/I and their performance in IVA. Learners with a higher FI degree are more likely to acquire words incidentally through reading, and only learners of low degree of ATI achieve poorly in IVA, learners of medium and high AT achieve equally in two vocabulary tests. 2) The variance of ambiguity tolerance has a significant effect on IVA in immediate post-test, but no significant differences between AT/I groups in their IVA scores in delayed post-test.3) The present research makes an attempt to describe the difference in FDI/ATI between effective learners and ineffective learners. The researcher found that students with higher FI or AT tend to gain more vocabulary knowledge incidentally from reading.The results of this chapter provide evidence that FD/I and AT/I are related to the incidental vocabulary acquisition achievement. IVA is commonly influenced by individual learner factors: motivation, cultural background, cognitive style and so on. FD/I and AT/I are just components of these aspects and two of the most important cognitive style dimensions. The findings show that cognitive style has great influence upon incidental vocabulary acquisition, which enrich the research on the relationship between cognitive style and incidental vocabulary acquisition.Different degree of field independence can generate different achievement for language learning. Learners of medium and high degrees of field independence achieve similarly in two post-tests, only the learners of low degree of field-independent are at disadvantage. Since lowly field-independent learners are so likely to be influenced by the learning situation that they are at disadvantages when confronted with unknown words during reading. Except the extreme low degree of independence, learners of other field independence degrees have their own flaws and strengths. Namely, at the same English language proficiency level, LFI learners tend to perform worse than other learners in IVA. In specific, this result can be explained through comparing CSFT and IVA process. During the process of IVA, readers need to make references abou原文请找 t the unfamiliar words they meet, which requires the learners to seek relevant information (cues) from the context so as to close up the information gap. In most cases, the cues are always embedded in the contexts and readers need to locate the cues by perceptual and analytic skills. As we know, in CSFT, field independent persons are more skillful than field dependent ones in locating a simple figure from a complex figure in which it is embedded. Then, it is easy to understand that FI learners are more skillful in locating the cues from the contexts in which they embedded. In other words, CSFT and IVA both require learners to be field independent in perceiving and analyzing information. It is therefore accountable that FI learners generally outperformed FD learners on IVA.认知风格与附带词汇习得的实证性研究Up to now, it may be safe to conclude that the correlation between FI and IVA performance has been well established. FI plays an important role and is one of the significant factors in predicting the success of IVA.It is proven that AT/I cognitive style exert significantly different influence upon the immediate post-test score. The learners with a high degree of AT over performed low AT in the reference of new words in reading. There are several reasons for the results:More tolerant people are relatively “open-minded” in accepting ideologies and events and facts that contradict their own views; they are more innovative and creative, and not cognitively or affectively disturbed by ambiguity and uncertainty. By contrast, persons with a low tolerance of ambiguity are more “close-minded”, more dogmatic, tend to reject items that are contradictory or slightly incongruent with their existing system; they wish to see every proposition fit into an acceptable place in their cognitive organization, and if it does not fit, it is rejected (Brown, 1987). Extensive reading, as we all know, is an extremely demanding task and it requires the learner to cope with information gap, unexpected language and situations, new cultural norms and substantial ambiguous stimulus. Therefore it makes sense that persons with HAT assess the new information and ambiguous situations as “desirable” while people with LAT as “sources of threat”. As a result, learners with higher AT will take and retain more word knowledge from reading.As referred in chapter two, researchers found that AT is positively related with risk-taking. The risk-taking behavior is regarded as a positive predictor of good language learners (Rubin 1975). To acquire new words form reading material, a reader will have to take the risk of making inference about the unknown words they encountered in reading, ignoring the inexactness of such guess. Guessing from context is a complex activity drawing on a range of skills and types of knowledge. It is worth bearing in mind that it is a sub-skill of reading and depends heavily on learners ability to read with a good level of proficiency. Learners with higher AT are more capable of inferential processing and generate more effective inferences than lower AT readers, and thus are able to gain larger amount of target input from their L2 reading than their less tolerant peers.However, the notion that more ambiguity tolerant students have better performances in language learning is challenged by the results of delayed post-test, in which there is no significant difference among the 3 groups with different degree of AT, that is to say, the AT cognitive style has no effect on the IVA in the long run. The findings can be explained in this way: each of the AT and AI learner has its own strengths and faults. In IVA process, although learners with high AT are likely to gain more words form context due to their tolerance of ambiguity and uncertainties in EFL input, they will inevitably learn some inexact language forms which will do harm to their retention for new words that were incidentally gained form reading material, so slower progress they will make than the learners with a low degree of AT. This explains that learners with 原文请找 HAT and LAT achieve similarly in the delayed post-test two weeks later.The T-test results demonstrated significant differences between effective and ineffective learners in their FDI and ATI, and effective learners tend to be highly field independent and more ambiguity tolerant learners. Firstly, effective and ineffective learners demonstrated significant differenc