Cognitive styles, second language proficiency, and reading comprehension of ESL students

النوع : Mémoire

This research studied the relationship between cognitive styles – namely Field Dependence and Field Independence – second language or L2 Proficiency, and students’ reading comprehension. One hundred twenty one (n=121) 8th graders from five different trilingual private schools in Lebanon sat for the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) and the reading and writing sections of the Language Proficiency Test Series (LPTS). Tests of Reading Comprehension (TORCH) were used to measure students’ literal and inferential comprehension. Students were divided into field dependent, field intermediate and field independent. Using SPSS, Cross Tabulation of data followed by Chi Square analysis was performed to investigate the correlation between L2 reading and writing proficiencies and cognitive styles. One-way ANOVA was also performed to investigate whether reading comprehension was impacted by cognitive styles. Results demonstrated that there is a statistically significant relation between reading and writing proficiency in L2 and between L2 reading and writing proficiency and cognitive styles that there is a statistically significant relation between cognitive styles and reading comprehension.