Effects Of Perceptual Learning Styles On College Students' Spoken English Proficiency

From the 1970s, experts in English pedagogy came to focus on the influence of learners'individual differences on their academic achievement. It is universally believed that learners'individual characteristics do exert great impact on learners'language achievement. Learning styles, as the main part of learners'individual factors, have been put as the center of relevant studies. However, studies on the subcategory of perceptual learning styles have been unsubstantial, needing further exploration.Foreign scholars conducted a large quantity of empirical studies, which mainly explored the interrelationships between learning styles, learning strategies and language achievements, such as reading, listening, writing and vocabulary. Compared with the studies abroad, relevant studies started much later in China, concentrating on the introduction of relevant theories imported from abroad. Empirical studies are rarely found in China, a small number of empirical studies took English majors as their subjects, but few investigated how perceptual learning styles influence learners'spoken English proficiency.The present paper is undertaken to investigate the frequency of perceptual learning styles of non-English majors and their spoken English proficiency, in order to explore the mechanism in which perceptual learning styles influence learners'spoken English proficiency.Through the theory analysis and literature study, the present paper proposed a hypothesis: perceptual learning styles influence learners'spoken English proficiency by way of influencing their choice and utilization of learning strategies. Meanwhile, the present study also analyzed the differences in spoken English proficiency between frequent strategy users and less frequent strategy users, and the difference in strategy uses between high proficient and low proficient English speakers. The result of the study indicates that non-English major students take tactile and kinesthetic styles as their most favored ones, followed by auditory, visual, individual and group styles in order. The situation of learning strategy employment among the subjects is of pluralism with meta-cognitive and affective strategies are the main learning strategies, social and compensation strategies are the least preferred ones. More importantly, the study found that, except individual styles, all the other five styles show significant correlations with all six learning strategies. By independent samples T-test, the study found that group styles significantly and positively correlate with spoken English proficiency, while individual styles significantly but negatively correlate with spoken English proficiency. Furthermore, among the learning strategies, except memory strategies, the rest five learning strategies all significantly and positively correlate with spoken English proficiency. Another important finding is that those high proficient English speakers use more diversified learning strategies more frequently than those less proficient subjects.Based on the results of the analysis, some concrete suggestions concerning college English pedagogy are put forward in the present paper. The suggestions include: make clear the frequency and employment of learning styles and learning strategies among students and get them coordinated and harmonized according to their interrelationships; conduct training on learning styles and learning strategies, in particular the learning strategies significantly correlating with spoken English proficiency including social and compensation strategies; English teachers should diversify their teaching methodologies to stimulate and activate students'various perceptual channels, satisfying the various perceptual and cognitive needs of students with different perceptual learning styles. All these measures should be taken to mobilize students'language input and output mechanism, improving spoken English proficiency of Chinese college non-English major students.