College Students' Perceptual Learning Styles In EFL Classroom

.A learning style refers to an individual's natural, habitual, and preferred ways of absorbing, processing, and retaining new information and skills which persist regardless of teaching methods or content areas (Kinsella 1994). Every learner has a learning style and learning strengths and weaknesses. A learning style is value-neutral; that is, it is no indication of intelligence or individual worth. No specific learning styles should be labeled as right or wrong. No one style is better than others. With the shift of focus from teaching methodology to learners and the learning process, the learning style has become one of the personality-related variables that draw more and more attention. The study has been concerned with: inventories of learning styles, the related factors in the forming of learning styles, the link between language learning styles and strategies, learning styles and classroom teaching, and learning styles and language acquisition. Following a cognitive and multiple-intelligence theoretical framework, the present study intends to investigate the perceptual learning style preferences of Chinese college students and teachers. The report results are also analyzed in terms of gender. Thus, my paper attempts to answer the following questions:1) What are college students and teachers' perceptual learning style preferences?2) Is there any difference between them? If there is, then3) How to address the mismatch between them to ameliorate the possible detrimental effect arising from the difference?4) Is there any difference between female and male college students' perceptual learning styles?5) If there is, how is it brought about?According to the study, some key findings emerge from the results. First of all, both college teachers and students prefer the perceptual learning styles of auditory, tactile, and individual learning. In addition, one significant difference between teachers and students' learning styles was demonstrated. The teachers were substantially more auditory than the students. Teachers usually teach the way they learn best. That means a large percentage of instruction is delivered in an auditory fashion. Students with other perceptual learning style preferences may suffer academically. The implications drawn from the research is that neither teachers nor students should cling to one single perceptual preference. To optimize teaching and learning they should be encouraged to expand their perceptual learning style preferences and become more adaptable to a variety of contexts. That is, efforts should be taken to develop multi-style preferences. Secondly, females and males learn in different ways. The underlying reasons for the differences are very complicated, involving both biological and developmental factors. Four perspectives on socialization and the formation of genders are presented to explore the possible underlying reasons for the gender difference in their learning styles.