A Study of the Relationship between Cognitive Styles and Learning Strategies

Abstract

This study focuses on the relationship between cognitive styles and learning strategies of 184 second-year English majors from the Foreign Language School of a university in Wuhan. In this study, quantitative data is presented. Two self-reported inventories are employed. Learning Style Survey is used to examine the learning styles of the participants and the Chinese version of Oxford’s Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) is conducted to survey the subjects’ learning strategies. The results show that cognitive styles have significant influence on learners’ choices of learning strategies. Synthesizing style, sharpener style, field-independent style and impulsive style of cognitive styles correlate positively almost with every strategy presented in this paper, so they turn to be the most influential cognitive styles that have an impact on learners’ learning strategy choices.