cognitive learning style

Advantages and Disadvantages
• High tolerance: emotionally in a better position to cope with them in a problemsolving frame of mind than a learner who feels frustrated or angry in ambiguous situations. • Free to entertain innovative and creative possibilities. • But too much tolerance can have a detrimental effect: people can become too free or flexible, hampering or preventing meaningful subsumption of ideas.
Teaching Implication
• Distinguish field dependent and independent learners and treat them separately. • Field dependent learners: relatively weaker in self-study /prefer to fulfill their learning tasks in the collective and collaborative environment/sensitive/good at memorization Give encouragement and confidence • Field independent learners: work and think independently/ able to make their own study plans Provide enough learning material and leave more time for them to study by themselves
• Strategies Vs Styles • Strategies are specific methods of approaching a problem or task. • Styles are general characteristic features that differentiate one individual from another . • Style is the manner of doing something, has to do with personality and motivation as well as the thinking tactics used in tackling problems.
Discussion • Who is a better learner in language learning, FI or FD person? (referring to P139) • Will a person always be FI or FD in his /her life? • FI or FD person under Society system
• Kagan (1964) Rapid responders & slow responders • Rapid responders ,who make a fair amount of errors, are called impulsive./little concern for accuracy • slow responders , make fewer errors, are call ___? /concerned with accuracy and take more time to reach a decision

What is Cognitive Learning Style ?
• is termed as cognitive style or learning style, is the manner of the language learner to approach problems in his or her language learning process. (textbook) • Ellis(1985) :is the term used to refer to the manner in which people perceive, conceptualize, organize, and recall information. • Ausubel(1969) “self-consistent and enduring individual differences in cognitive organization and functioning.”
Style 3: Tolerance of Ambiguity
• The degree to which a person is cognitively willing to tolerate ideas and propositions that run counter to your own belief system or structure of the knowledge.
Implications for language learning
• Reflective learners tend to make fewer errors in reading/ secure higher reading scores • Impulsive learners are usu. fast readers . • Inductive reasoning was found to be more effective with reflective learners . • Reflective learners were slower but more accurate. • Reflective learners are less active to respond and sometimes total silent. • Advantages and disadvantages: P143 textbook
Style 1: Field Independence & Field dependence Field: 1. a technical term in physics 2. visual field in psychology 3. similar in meaning to context or background
Cognitive Learning Style
Five Major Styles
• • • • • Field Independence & Field dependence Reflectivity &Impulsivity Tolerance of Ambiguity Left and Right Brain Functioning Broad Vs Narrow Category Width
• A person with high tolerance: “openminded”, more content, even internalize contradictory propositions. • A person with low tolerance: “closeminded”, dogmatic, reject items…
• Implications on how is field independentdependent style related to second language learning?
• Depending on the context of learning, individual learners should be able to vary their utilization of field independence or dependence. • It is misconception to view field dependence and independence in complementary distribution. • Learners might be both highly FI and FD as context vary.
• Style 2: Reflectivity &Impulsivity (审慎型与冲 动型) • Reflectivity means a person tends to weigh all the considerations of the problem, workout all the loopholes, then after extensive reflections, make slower and more calculated decision. • Impulsivity means that a person tends to make a quick or gambling guess at an answer to a problem. • David Ewing(1977) used two different terms for the same type of cognitive style: systematic style and intuitive style.
Field Independence: points to the ability of a person to perceive a particular, relevant item or factor in a “field” of distracting items as discrete from the surrounding field as a whole. Field Dependence: “dependent” on the total field such that the parts embedded within the field are not easily perceived, though the total field is perceived more clearly as a unified whole.
1. What are the differences between a field independent person and a field independent person ? 2. Are you a FI person or a FD person?
• A field independent person tends to perceive things analytically, is impersonally oriented and less aware of other’s interests. • A field dependent person tends to perceive globally and shows strong social orientation and is more empathetic and more perceptive of others and is an active participant. • ( see tab5.2 on P139)
Cognitive style cognitive aspect: Ausubel(1968) identified
18 different styles; Joseph Hill (1972) defined 29 different cognitive styles
affective aspect