A Correlation Study Between Non-English Majors' Learning Styles And Listening Achievement In Higher Vocational Colleges

With the rapid development of second language acquisition, learners' individual differences have been given more attention to, so people's focus is shifted from "teacher-centered" teaching mode to " student-centered " teaching mode. In this case, more and more educators and researchers put emphasis on learner's learning process and learner's individual characteristics rather than teachers'teaching methods and teaching process. As a result, learners'individual differences, such as personality, attitude, motivation, and learning style, have been attached much importance to.As a very important component of learners'individual differences, learning style is in involved in the learning process and has a direct and constant effect on learning achievement. Therefore, diagnosing learners' learning style as much as possible is meaningful for "student-centered " teaching mode and individualized teaching.In this field, foreign educators have done a lot of theoretical and empirical researches on learning style, whereas in China, the researches are limited to theoretical study and are short of empirical study. Limited empirical study is mainly aimed at high school students and university students. Seldom do researchers regard college students in Higher Vocational Colleges as their subjects. Hardly do they combine students' learning styles and their listening achievement to carry out the research.Under the circumstances, using Reid's Perceptual Learning Style Survey as the research instrument, this paper viewed non-English majors in Inner Mongolia Technical College of Construction as subjects and did a correlation study between their learning styles and listening achievement in order to solve the five questions:1. What's non-English major's learning style preferences in Inner Mongolia Technical College of Construction?2. Is there any difference in learning style between male students and female students?3. Is there any difference in learning style between students of Art and students of Science?4. Is there correlation between student's learning style and their listening achievement?5. Is there any difference in learning style between students with higher scores and students with lower scores?After collecting and analyzing the data with SPSS 13.0, this paper reached the following conclusions:1. Non-English majors in Inner Mongolia Technical College of Construction prefer kinesthetic and tactile learning styles most and auditory least.2. There is no significant difference in learning style between male students and female students except that male students are more inclined to prefer tactile learning style than female students.3. There is no significant difference in learning style between students of Art and students of Science except that students of Science are more inclined to prefer kinesthetic learning style than students of Art.4. Visual learning style, kinesthetic learning style and tactile learning style correlate with listening achievement, while auditory learning style, group-oriented learning style and individual-oriented learning style do not correlate with listening achievement.5. There is significant difference in visual learning style, kinesthetic learning style and tactile learning style between students with higher scores and students with lower scores.In conclusion, the writer put forward some suggestions on English listening teaching.