Comparative Study Of Non-English Major Undergraduates' Learning Style Preferences In The Traditional And Multimedia English Classroom

College English teaching / learning is a complex issue, encompassing sociocultural, linguistic, psycholinguistic, as well curricula and instructional dimensions. A large number of individual factors contribute to the dynamic teaching/learning process. However, just what those factors are and exactly how they affect the process is much more unclear. It has been generally assumed that these factors include age, aptitude, personality, learning styles, learning strategies, gender, motivation, etc. This thesis focuses on two aspects of learning style: one is to explore the non-English major college students' overall learning style preferences among Chinese universities; another one is to study how the students' learning style preferences shift in different learning environments.The research was carried out within two different types of classrooms (one is multimedia classroom; the other traditional classroom) between Yantai Teachers university and Shandong Technology and Business Institute. The participants of this study are 260 four-year non-English majors of grade 2002, drawn randomly from six majors of Yantai Teachers University (teaching College English in multimedia classrooms), and Shandong Technology and Business Institute (teaching College English in traditional classrooms).The questionnaires used to measure the students' learning style preferences are adapted from O'Brien's (1990) Learning Channel Preference Checklist (see Appendix 1), which has three categories of sensory learning style preferences: visual, auditory, haptic learning. The questionnaire is self-reporting and contains 36 statements, which participants can rate on a five-point scale. Another one is Reid's (1987) Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire (see Appendix 2), which is based on the concept of six learning style preferences: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile, individual and group learning. There are 30 statements, which participants rate on a five-point Likert scale. Both of them have been translated into Chinese when distributed to the participants.Data are collected and analyzed by SPSS 11.5 for windows. Descriptive statistic analysis based on O'Brien' checklist shows more than 80 of the students prefer visual learning, followed by auditory learning preference. And Reid's questionnaire also demonstrates Chinese college students have a stronger preference for tactile, kinesthetic, individual, visual learning preference. These results confirmed the former researches aboutChinese students.Statistic Independent-T Test of those data from the O'Brien's Checklist indicates that there exist statistically significant differences in visual learning preference (t = 2.204, p < 0.05) between the majors of liberal arts in the two schools, and differences in auditory (t = -2.068, p < 0.05) and haptic learning (t = -2.733, p < 0.01) between the majors of science in the two schools. After comparing the students' overall learning style preferences between the two universities, we can see there exist statistically significant differences in visual learning preference (t = 2.747, p < 0.001), auditory learning preference (t = -2.105, p < 0.05) and haptic learning preference (t = -1.991, p < 0.05). And through statistic Independent-T Test of those data from Reid's Questionnaire, we find the students in the two schools differ significantly in tactile learning preference (t = 2.681, p < 0.01). So we can draw such a conclusion that when the students are exposed to different learning environments, their learning style preferences will shift accordingly.