An Investigation Into Language Learning Styles Of Senior High School Students And Its Implications For English Teaching

More and more attention has been paid to the research of learning styles. The researchers have been studying learning styles of learners at different stages and different ages. In China, researchers mainly study learning styles of college students and have achieved a lot. Unfortunately, few researchers have investigated the learning styles of the students in middle schools. To make up for the deficiencies of the achievements in learning styles in China, this study focuses on the investigation of senior high school students' learning styles.The thesis starts by defining learning styles preferences and discussing the features of learning styles particularly relevant to foreign and second language education. After analyzing many definitions given by researchers, the author defines the concept of learning styles: learning styles are preferred ways in which learners absorbing, processing, and retaining new information and skills. Learning styles are different from learning strategies and cognitive styles. Learning style encompasses three stimulus categories: (1) psychological (2) physical (3) sociological. According to the three categories, learning styles can be broken down into three dimensions of learning style that are likely to be among those most strongly associated with L2 learning: sensory learning styles, cognitive learning styles, personality learning styles.After a discussion of learning styles relevant to L2, the paper introduces the investigation of learning styles which are favored by senior high school students. The Style Analysis Survey (SAS) designed by Oxford was administered to the first and third grade students in No.6 Middle School in Shijiazhuang City. The data was analyzed statistically. The results show clearly that the preferred learning styles of the students are visual /auditory, extroverted, intuitive, closure-oriented and global. However, the results are somewhat different from the former researches. Oxfords & Burry-Stock's(1995) have discovered that Chinese students are concrete-sequential;Nelson's(1995) has discovered that Chinese students are analytic learners;Sharp(2004) has also claimed that Chinese students are introverted learners. Then the reasons arepresented as following: first, the previous studies were conducted some years ago, during which social environments and educational environments changed a lot;second, the ages of the present subjects were different from the former ones;third, the different instrument was employed in this study.Then, based on the results, some implications for EFL teaching were provided. They included that teachers should meet students' style preferences in class, be aware of their own learning styles as well as learners' and try their best to create teacher-student style matching.