Abstract
The purpose of this descriptive study was to identify the prevalent cognitive styles of language learners studying different languages at master level. The survey was conducted by using a Cognitive Style Questionnaire (CSQ) for identifying the students’ demographics and cognitive styles respectively. The association between students’ cognitive styles and their academic performance was also explored. The other research question was related to differences in students’ cognitive styles with reference to their demographics. Data were collected from 218 Master level language students from a metropolitan university of Pakistan. Data analysis revealed that the most prevalent cognitive style for students from French Language, English Language, Arabic Language, and Persian Language is Focusing; for Urdu Language is Reflexive and for Punjabi Language is Auditory/Visual mixed. It was seen that there exist multiple cognitive styles for students in each one of the fields with a slightly higher concentration in one or two dimensions of styles. In the overall scenario the academic performance differs significantly in relation to only the Auditory/Visual cognitive style. There is no significant difference in performance of students at all other levels in relation to the other three cognitive styles. The results of the study lead to the fact that further exploration is needed on a large data to get more insight in the phenomenon.