This study sets up a specific question: whether or not the variability of the learner's grammatical accuracy from unattended to careful styles will occur as a function of the learner's cognitive style, i.e. Field-Dependence (holistic and socially sensitive orientation in learning) and Field-Independence (analytic and impersonal orientation in learning).
Three different tasks have been used in the present empirical study. The first, the Embedded Figures Test differenciates between the Field-Dependent and Field-Independent learners. The second, the picture description task, was conducted in order to elicit the natural speech of learners (i.e. unattended style). The last task was a grammaticality judgment task, that represents the attended style, where subject were supposed to monitor their grammatical knowledge.
The results indicated that the Field-Dependent learner was more accurate in the picture description task than the Field-Independent learner, whereas the Field-independent learner was more accurate in the grammaticality judgment task than the Field-dependent learner. This finding indicates that there is a relationship between the Field-dependent / Field-Independent cognitive style and language-learner language variability. It is hoped that such a study will contribute to our better understanding of second language acquisition processes and ultimately aid the second language teaching profession.
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