Learning Styles And Listening Strategies Of EFL Learners

In recent thirty years, the attention of researchers and language teachers has been attracted by the research of language learners' learning styles and learning strategies. Many empirical studies have revealed that learning styles and learning strategies are closely related with each other (Oxford,1989; Rossi-1e,2002; Ehrman & Oxford,1995). But most of the researches are aimed at general universities and senior middle students, few about medical students. The present research is to investigate the two individual factors of medical students: listening strategy and learning style. The current study seeks to find out 1) the overall learning tendencies of successful and less-successful medical students; 2) the listening strategy profile of successful and less-successful medical students; 3) the relationship between listening proficiency and successful and less-successful listener's learning style; 4) the relationship between listening proficiency and successful and less-successful listener's listening strategies; 5) the correlation of learning styles and listening strategies.The subjects in this thesis are 66 freshmen in Chengdu Medical College. The instruments used in this research are two complicated questionnaires and a listening comprehension test. One of the questionnaires is Perceptual Learning Style Preference Survey (PLSPS), which developed by Joy Reid (2002) consists of thirty items in random in order to allow EFL students to self-identify their preferred learning styles among six categories:visual, auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, group and individual. The other questionnaire, Listening Strategy Questionnaire (LSQ), was composed by Wang Yu based on O'Malley and Chamot's (2001) and Wen Qiufang's (1995) typology of leaning strategies. The questionnaire consists of five parts, metacognitive strategies, form-focused strategies, meaning-focused strategies, mother-tongue-reliance strategy and social/affective strategy, and can be further divided into eight sub-strategies altogether, which is used to investigate the state of the choice and use of listening strategies. Listening comprehension test which were taken from listening comprehension part of CET 4 in Dec. of 2009, aims to investigate the subjects'listening comprehension proficiency.After SPSS analysis, there are some important findings:Firstly, the subjects are multiple-style preferences. They use more than one sense to get necessary information. The highest frequency is tactile style, while the lowest is group style. There is no significant difference between successful and less-successful listeners'learning styles. From the interacting angle, there is insignificant correlation between learning styles and listening proficiency. Learning styles haven't direct relationship with listening proficiency.Secondly, as for the listening strategy, it is found that subjects prefer to use multiple listening strategies instead of a single strategy. According to the data, the most frequently used listening strategy is meaning-focused strategy. Additionally, there is no significant difference between successful and less-successful listeners in five main listening strategies. However, listening strategy use varied significantly between successful and less-successful listeners in monitoring and grammar sub-strategies. Successful listeners prefer to use the two strategies. Listening proficiency and metacongnitive strategies of five main strategies and monitoring, grammar and inferencing sub-strategies have higher correlation than listening proficiency with other listening strategies.Finally, there is a positive correlation between learning styles and listening strategies. The listening strategies the subjects chose are linked to their learning styles. Learning styles affect the choice and use of listening strategies; learners with different learning styles choose different strategies in their listening process. Learners having the six kinds of learning style each have their own preferred listening learning strategy.In brief, the present study enriches the research in learning styles and listening strategies. Practically, the research will help to arouse the awareness, deepen the understanding of the learning style construct and help teachers better understand language learners'preferences of listening strategy.Based on the findings of the thesis, suggestions are put forward for changing learners' ineffective mother-tongue-reliance strategy and expand learners'repertoires based on the correlation of learning styles and listening comprehension strategy.