Enhancing Teaching Effectiveness Through Matching Teaching Styles Learning Styles In The Classrooms Of First-Year College English Majors

The question of how to teach first-year college English majors effectively has ever haunted college English teachers in China. No matter how hard they try, there are always some students who show a tendency to be bored and inattentive in class, do poorly on tests, get discouraged about the course, and may conclude that they are no good at English learning and give up. Teachers, confronted by low test grades, unresponsive or hostile classes, poor attendance, and dropouts, may become overly critical of their students or, to make things worse, begin to question their own competence as teachers. In considering how to improve student teaching effectiveness, teachers need to understand student learning styles. It is generally agreed that matching between teaching styles and learning styles can lead to students' academic achievements as well as their active participations in the classrooms. This study intends to explore the aspects of students' learning styles thought to be particularly relevant to L2 learning, outline ways in which certain learning styles are favored by the teaching styles of most language teachers, assess the distributions of learning styles of first-year college English majors,and finally gives some suggestions on how to match teaching style to learning style in the classrooms of college English majors. Self-reported data were collected from 88 first-year college English majors who were from three classes in the English Department, Foreign Languages Institute, Liaoning Teachers' University by using a close-ended questionnaire. Findings show a great variety of students' learning styles, which implies that a mismatch often occurs between the learning styles of the students in an English class and the teaching style of the teacher. Undoubtedly such style differences between students and teachers consistently and negatively affect student grades. In an attempt to remedy this problem so as to enhance teaching effectiveness, teachers need to understand and respect individual learning styles. It is when students' learning styles are matched with appropriate approaches in teaching that their motivation, performances, and achievements will increase and be enhanced. Based on social constructivism, this thesis suggests that teachers employ instruments to identify students' learning styles and provide instructional alternatives to address their differences. In the learning environments in which instruction is designed and managed in accordance with students' learning styles, students are certainly the center, while the teacher is a manager and facilitator. Students, especially new students, feel that their differences in learning are respected, and that the learning atmosphere is made more humane, more comfortable, more supportive, and less threatening. Moreover, students may also be encouraged by the teacher to stretch their learning style preferences to the end that they become more autonomous learners. It is generally agreed that such an atmosphere is conducive to a favorable attitude. So the learning style theory is an effective approach to motivate learners of L2 and thus lead to maximal learning.One point worth emphasizing is that there is a potential danger of overgeneralization on learning style. Therefore, teachers must be sensitive to the difference between identifying typical preferences and overgeneralizing trends into stereotyping students according to widely held sociocultural assumptions.