A Study On Learning Styles Of Vocational Students In The Vocational School ESL Classrooms

The learners'individual shows great difference on the process of learning. In China, under the educational system, few of individual difference are taken into consideration in English classrooms teaching due to the competition of Entrance Examinations. In Chinese traditional class, no matter how many members a class consists of, teacher is certain to be the centre while the learners difference are neglected. Students are expected to listen to the teacher, not interrupt, sit quietly and listen attentively or take notes training together. In this kind model of teaching and learning, the role of the learners is fairly passive one and unable to form the competence of constructing.With the reforming of English teaching as the ESL in our country, the teaching must take account of the learner as an individual, thus making the learning process full of the sense of individual. Over the last twenty years, most of our research has focused on different levels of learners especially on good learners including college students, secondary school students. The students who are not attending their high school classes regularly are identified by others as failures and are potential dropouts. Most of them have to be enrolled in the vocational school. However, schools need to look at the whole learner on different level and take into consideration the learners'individual differences, including the students'learning styles. Actually learners bring their own individual approach, talents, interests, etc. to the learning situation. The learning styles are one of many variables in the process of learning. In an effort to discover why vocational school students were not performing well, I embarked on the research concerning learning style of them.With the shift of focus in ESL from teacher to learners and classroom learning, we draw more and more attention on the learners'individual. The successful educator must be one who understands the complexities of the teaching-learning process and draw upon this knowledge to act in ways which empower learners with the classroom situation. The role of the instructor cannot be underestimated in a classroom that purports to promote diversity.Based on social constructivism and multiple intelligence theory, this study intends to investigate the learning styles of Chinese English learner in vocational school, with respect to their sensory (visual, auditory, and hands-on modes), their affective/temperament (extraversion vs. introversion; intuition vs. concrete-sequential) and their cognitive(global vs. analytic). The research explores the following questions:1) How they use their physical senses to study? What are the major, minor, negative, or multiple learning style preferences of vocational school students?2) What is the relationship between their learning styles and academic achievements?3) Do these learning styles vary by gender? Is there any difference of learning style between female and male of vocational school students?4) Since there are two kinds of learning-goal classes in vocational school, how do they differ in the learning styles? What's the difference of learning style for the students majoring in different course?The sample of the study consists of 106 vocational school students (males:74 female:32)from Grade Two in Computer Vocational School of Dalian Liaoning. Style Analysis Survey (SAS) designed by Oxford (1993) is used in present research. SAS is designed to assess one's general approach to learning and working. It does not predict the behaviour in every instance, but it is a clear indication of one's overall style preferences. It is concerned with five different aspects of one's learning and working style. The study is also based on the English academic achievements in the Middle School Graduation Examination to see whether or not there is any significant correlation between the learning styles and the academic achievements.The study reveals the following characteristics of learning styles of the vocational school students:1) The vocational students choose hands-on activity as their major learning styles and showed minor preferences for visual learning and auditory learning; and they are more extroverted when dealing with other people; and they are intuitive when handling possibilities; most of them focus carefully on learning tasks; they enjoy getting the main idea and are more global.2) Most of middle achievers are hands-on persons, while high and low achievers have negative preferences for auditory learning ;and all of them are extroverted;middle achiever are the most intuitive, but the high achiever and the lower ones handle possibilities in balance way i.e. either intuitive or concrete-sequential; middle and lower achievers are typically closure-oriented; the high and low achievers are more global, the middle achiever are in the middle way.3) Boy students are more hands-on than visual and auditory while the girl students prefer all of the senses; Both males and females students significantly prefer extroverted learning in class, and both of them are intuitive; compared to the girls, boys are more closure-oriented; but the girls are more global than the boys.4) Examining-class prefer hands-on as their major learning & working style, working-class learn best through auditory means(listening and speaking activities); examining-class are extroverted in class ,enjoying a wide range of social, interactive learning tasks, while working-class are balanced in sense that they work easily with others and by themselves; examining-class are intuitive are future-oriented, the two scores of working-class are close, they can switch modes rather easily from intuitive to concrete-sequential; both examining-class and working-class got high score for closure, they focus carefully on all learning tasks; and both examining-class and working-class are global, they enjoy getting the main idea ,guessing meanings, and communicating even if they don't know all the words or concepts.The research shows that it is quite necessary for both the language instructors and the learners to raise the awareness of learning styles and attend to become more"flexible"in the teaching and learning process, that is to say, flexibility should be developed in both teachers and learners. The learners who know their learning styles can adopt more effective and efficient strategies, and also they should stretch their learning styles for different kinds of tasks and teaching styles from different teachers in the ESL classrooms. As for the instructors, they should try to adapt their teaching and diversify their teaching styles to match the diverse learning styles of the different learners with different achievement levels. Broadening one's teaching style to accommodate a wider range of learner characteristics, while helping students develop a more flexible, empowered approach to diverse learning contexts and tasks. Only in these ways can an effective teaching and learning be promoted and achieved.