College Students' And Teachers' 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 area (Kinsella 1994). Every learner has a learning style and learning strengths and weakness. Learning styles are value-neutral: that is, no one style is better than others. With the shift of focus from teaching methodology to learners and the learning process, learning style has become one of the personality-related variables that draw more and more attention. The research on language learning styles mainly started from the 1970s and much developed during the following two decades. The main contributors to this field are Dunn(1975;1979;1989;1990), Kinsella (1993;1994), Keefe (1979;1987), Reid (1984;1987;1990;1993;2000), Bassano (1989; 1991), Christison (1995), Claxon (1987), Oxford (1989;1994). Up to date, the study has been concerning with: 1) inventories of learning styles 2) the related factors in the forming of learning styles 3) the link between language learning styles and learning strategies 4) learning styles and classroom teaching 5) learners'learning styles and their language acquisition. Following a cognitive and social-constructivism theoretical framework, the present study nitends to investigate the perceptual learning style preference of Chinese college students and teachers and analyzed the report results. Thus, the paper attempts to answer the following questions. i) What are the differences between Grade One students and Grade Two students in learning style preference? ii) How are they brought about? iii) What are second language learning styles of college students and teachers in China? iv) Is there any difference between them? If there is, then v) What should teachers and students do to minimize the mismatch to improve the learning performance? The study was carried out on 64 students (31 from Grade One, 33 from Grade Two) and 12 teachers using a five-scale questionnaire of Perceptual Learning Styles Preference Survey. According to the study, some key finds emerge from the results. First of all, most college students prefer the perceptual learning styles of visual, tactile and individual learning. Grade Two Students showed more moderate learning style preference than Grade One students. This preference is mostly due to their age factor the educational system and traditional teaching and examining method in their previous study. 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 are that neither teachers nor students should cling to single perceptual preference. To optimize teaching and learning they should be encouraged to expand their perceptual learning style preferences and become more adaptable to variety of contexts. That is, efforts should be taken to develop multi-style preferences.