Cognitive factors that influence EFL learning?

Brown (1987), for example, presents three concepts of process, style, and strategy. He further claims that these terms are sometimes used interchangeably. He distinguishes the Word "process" from "style" claiming that the former is a general mental activity while the latter is an individual mental activity. He also believes that both concepts are different from "strategy" which refers to idiOSyncratic mental activities. The mere existence of these concepts, differences between them, degrees of overlap and interactions among them, and simply the way they function in relation to different language elements are all open to empirical investigation.

These concepts are all involved in the learning process which is a mysterious

phenomenon by itself. Different types of learning such as signal learning, stimulus response learning, verbal association learning, multiple discrimination learning,concept learning, and learning through problem solving are well-known in the field.

There are other less known or even unknown kinds of learning such as discovery learning, rote learning, inductive learning, deductive learning, and meaningful learning. Again, similarities, differences, degrees of overlap among these factors, and the appropriateness of each type for certain individuals or groups as well as subject matters appropriate to each method provide ample opportunities for research in TEFL.

Another group of variables in cognitive domain is formed by the interaction of

different processes when two or more languages are learned concurrently. Transfer,interference, overgeneralization, and other processes and phenomena resulting from such interactions are just a few areas for research. It requires extensive investigation on similarities and differences between two or more languages, i.e., contrastive linguistics, as well as type and sources of errors, i.e., error analysis, to shed some lights on the intricacies of these processes.

The third factor in this domain is cognitive style which constitutes an area of research for those who are interested in matching methods of presenting materials and the most convenient way of teaching materials. Cognitive style is defined as "self-consistent and enduring individual differences in cognitive domain and functioning". According to cognitive domain, some people are field dependant, i.e., who depend on the totality rather than individual parts, while some others are field independent, i.e., who are willing to proceed from particular to totality. To investigate the effect of cognitive style on learning will provide ample opportunities for TEFL students to do research.

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