A Study Of The Relationship Between First-year Non-English Majors' Learning Styles And Listening Achievements

Since first introduced by Harbert Thelen in 1954, learning style has attracted more and more researcher's attention and is becoming a focus for both psychology and language teaching. A number of studies have been carried out on the relations of learning styles, in which researchers tried to investigate it from different angles. We may define learning styles as learners'unique preference of certain ways of learning, which are frequently used by them in the process of learning.Originated in the investigation of learners'differences, the research on language learning styles mainly started from the 1970s and further developed during the following two decades. It is found that learning styles are value-neutral: that is, no one style is better than others and every learning style has its strengths and weakness. Following Brown's statement that learning styles and foreign language achievements correlated with each other, Wang Chu Ming, Wu Yi An, Liu Run Qing and Yu Xin Le further investigated it respectively. Wu studied whether introverted/extroverted and field-dependent/field-independent correlated with learning styles; Yu found that assimilative learning style and memory will have effect on English majors'achievements.Because different learning styles will be superior to others in varied settings and learning tasks, the author studied the learning styles of 245 non-English majors in Inner Mongolia Normal University and the focus was placed on the learning style preferences of them, seeking the possible relationships between English learning styles and English listening achievements. It is hoped that the study may both acquaint students with their English learning styles and benefit them in their English listening.Based on the analyzed results of questionnaire, the main findings were as follows:1. It has been found out that non-English majors in Inner Mongolia Normal University preferred visual, high ambiguity, extroverted, intuitive and global learning styles most and auditory learning least.2. There is no significant difference between students'major and learning style preferences, except that students leaning science have higher ambiguity than those learning art.3. Compared with males, more females prefer visual learning; while compared with females, more males prefer tactical learning.4. Auditory, extroverted, intuitive and high ambiguity learning correlate with English listening achievements.5. There is no significant difference between auditory learners and learners of the other types in English listening achievements.