Relationship between English Listening Proficiency and Cognitive Styles under the Web-based Instructional Model

Web-based instructional model and classroom teaching may have different effects on English listening performance of high school students with different cognitive styles. This paper mainly focuses on the field-independent and field-dependent theories of the cognitive styles, and adopts a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods to collect data on the cognitive styles of senior high school students and their English listening scores under the web-based instructional model and ultimately figure out their relationships. According to the research results, it can be seen that, under the web-based instructional model, students with field-independent and field-dependent cognitive styles show great differences in listening proficiency, that is, the listening proficiency of the field-independent students are much higher than that of the field-dependent ones. The result inspires the teachers to adopt appropriate web-based listening teaching methods. Only when teaching and learning are complementary and compatible with each other can the students’ learning enthusiasm be improved; therefore, the efficiency of listening teaching can be further improved.