A Study On College Student's Perceptual Learning Style Preference And Its Correlation With English Learning

The concept of learning style was first put forward by American scholar Herbert Thelen in 1954. Since then, many researchers and scholars aroused interest in this field and have produced more than 30 theories and modes on learning styles. In recent 30 years, learning style has been one of important topics concerned and explored in the fields of educational psychology, learning theory and teaching theory. While it is generally believed that learning style refers to an individual's natural, habitual, and preferred way(s) of absorbing, processing, and retaining new information and skills. Reid in his perceptual learning style theory believed that there were six modes, visual learning style preference mode, auditory learning style preference mode, tactile learning style preference mode, kinesthetic learning style preference mode, group and individual perceptual learning style mode when the learners learned. Learners always perform better in one or two modes, for example, those who can perform best in visual mode will be called visual learners, similarly in other 5 modes.In this study Reid's Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire was adopted and administered to 71 freshmen who had the similar English learning background majored in law and sociology in Shanxi Normal University in order to investigate the major and minor learning style preferences of college students; By analyzing two examination scores and using SPSS 11.5 to make an Independent Sample T-test and Pearson Correlation to analyze the data in order to investigate whether there is relationship between students'learning styles and English Achievements; whether there is relationship among the six perceptual learning styles; and what is the difference in learning style between high English achievers and low English achievers.The findings show that the major perceptual learning style preferences of college students are individual learning style and auditory learning style preference and the minor perceptual learning style preferences of college students are group learning style and visual learning style preference; there is relationship between student's perceptual learning styles and his or her English achievement; there is the relationship among the six perceptual learning styles; and there is big difference in auditory learning style and individual learning style between high English achievers and low English achievers. Through findings of the study, the students can realize the advantages and disadvantages of their own learning style preferences and the existence of related learning styles, which will help the students make full use of all the related learning styles in learning and improve the learning efficiency and help low English achievers find suitable learning ways to arouse interest and promote confidence in learning by being aware of the advantages and disadvantages of their learning style preferences; at the same time, the study can enlighten the college English teachers to appropriately adjust their ways of teaching to provide students with opportunities of discovering potential and interest as many as possible.