The paper titled "Saudi Female EFL Learners’ Cognitive Styles and Reading Comprehension: Implications for Reading Instruction and Strategies" focuses on the relationship between the cognitive styles of Saudi female learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and their performance in reading comprehension. The research question centers on how different cognitive styles, specifically field-dependence and field-independence, impact students' academic success in reading comprehension.
The purpose of the study is to explore how the cognitive styles of Saudi female EFL learners influence their reading comprehension and to offer pedagogical implications for improving reading instruction based on these findings. The scope includes the categorization of learners into three types—field-dependent dominant, field-independent dominant, and mixed—based on their cognitive styles, and the subsequent examination of their reading comprehension performance.
Methodologically, the study involved 140 Saudi female EFL students from King Khalid University. Data were collected using a combination of a questionnaire, a cognitive style test, classroom observations, and a reading comprehension test. The data were analyzed using Microsoft Excel and SPSS to compute mean scores and conduct a one-way analysis of variance to determine the significance of the differences among the cognitive style groups.
The key findings revealed that most students exhibited mixed cognitive styles and that those with mixed cognitive styles outperformed both field-dependent and field-independent dominant students in reading comprehension. Interestingly, contrary to the initial hypothesis, field-independent students did not significantly outperform field-dependent students.
In conclusion, the study suggests that the presence of mixed cognitive styles among students has a positive impact on reading comprehension. The findings imply that EFL teachers should adopt teaching strategies that accommodate both field-dependent and field-independent learners to enhance overall academic performance in reading comprehension. Recommendations for future research include further investigation into cognitive styles among different demographics of EFL learners to better understand their influence on language learning.