| dc.description.abstract | Academic English is important for researchers because it is a main language in academic area. Unlike general English, academic English is defined as a formal language. However, academic English involves many aspects. Among them, academic writing is the most important because students need to present their empirical results as academic papers. However, several students need to spend more time writing papers because there are no enough courses to guide them on the academic writing. Thus, the courses for academic writing have been paid more attention for recent years.
However, they would meet some problems in academic writing. One is the English grammar while the other is English logic. It might be because the former is related to the syntax of the language while the latter is related to information organization. Such abilities could make readers easily understand the content of the paper easily. Thus, how to improve students’ English grammar and English logic is important. In order to address this issue, digital learning tools are applied to facilitate students to learn English grammar and English logic. One of the digital tools is E-assessment because such digital tool can provide interactive learning environments for students so that can control their learning paths by themselves. However, there are still several disadvantages in the E-assessment. For instance, insufficient guidance would make students feel frustrated and increase their cognitive loading. Due to such disadvantages, scaffoldings are required in the E-assessment.
On the other hand, e-assessment systems with scaffoldings provide students with a rich learning environment but individual differences need to be considered. This is due to the fact that each student has different characteristics that may affect their learning. Among them, cognitive style is one of key human factors which had great effects on students’ learning. This is because cognitive style affects students how to handle information or how to use information. One of these cognitive styles is Holism and Serialism, which demonstrate different information processing patterns. Due to such differences, this research attempt to measure how students learn English grammar and English logic from a cognitive style perspective. To this end, two experiments were conducted
The participants of these two experiments are the graduated institute students who come from the north university in Taiwan. Study One is to explore how students with different cognitive styles use digital tools to learn English grammar. The results indicated that several differences exist between Holists and Serialists. Holists prefer to collect different types of information to build the global picture of the tasks. Moreover, they would use various types of scaffoldings to support themselves to complete the tasks. In other word, they could process the large information at a time. On the contrary, Serialists showed the linear learning pattern when they solved the problems. In other word, they prefer to complete the tasks step by step. In addition, there is no significant differences between these two cognitive style groups on the learning performance. It may be because learners with different cognitive styles will select their own solutions to the problems. Therefore, they got the similar scores on the learning tasks. Regarding the learning perception, both of Holists and Serialists consider the location hint is the best way to help them solve problems. The reason is that it can provide the most direct information, from which students could know the mistakes quickly.
Study Two is to investigate how students with different cognitive styles use digital tools to learn English logic. The results showed that Holists were good at adjusting their solutions when they solved the problems. In other word, they tended to use different approaches. That is the reason why the non-linear learning pattern was presented by Holists. On the contrary, Serialists would follow a sequential learning pattern when undertaking the learning tasks. Moreover, they cannot handle much information when they are completing the learning tasks. In other word, Serialists could only focus on one thing at a time. On the other hand, significant differences exist between these two cognitive style groups on the learning performance. Holists obtain higher scores than Serialists on the posttest. It might be because there is no additional support on the posttest so they could not obtain the information that they required. Regarding the learning perception, they showed the differences. Most of Holists considered that the answer hint could help them solve the problem while Serialists thought that the location hint could provide useful information for them. Although the differences existed between Holists and Serialists on the learning perception, such findings showed that both of them relied on scaffoldings.
In summary, the two empirical experiments showed that students with different cognitive styles had similar problem solving patterns in different learning contexts, including English grammar and English. Holists showed an iterative learning approach on both learning contexts. Moreover, they preferred to collect large information in order to build the global picture of subject contents and they are also good at using such information to adjust the solutions by themselves. Conversely, Serialists showed the linear learning pattern in both English contexts. In other word, they would solve the problem step by step. In other word, they could only focus on one thing at a time. More specifically, when acquiring new information, they would prefer to start from the beginning of the tasks, instead of adjusting the solution immediately. The results from the two experiments can be applied to develop a personalized digital learning system that can accommodate the preferences of different cognitive style groups in the future. | en_US |