A Research On Learning Styles And Content Preferences Of College English Teaching Materials

The methodology used in the research is mainly quantitative research, partly qualitative research. The author adopts Reid's questionnaire of learning style preferences which has high validity and reliability, and uses self-made questionnaire of College English teaching materials'content preferences according to the characteristics of Chinese college students and College English teaching materials, then conducts random sampling of students of Changsha University of Science & Technology, choosing 248 non-English majors from 8 departments of 4 institutes and carries out questionnaire research. Using purposive sampling way,12 students are chosen with each learning style 2 samples as the interview subjects from 248 subjects. They are to answer some semi-open questions.The author makes mean analysis of descriptive statistics analysis on the collected data using SPSS 18.0. The results show that non-English majors' learning styles obviously tend to be visual, kinesthetic, tactile and individual learning styles, while auditory and group learning styles have no apparent tendency. College English teaching material contents'preferences obviously tend to be blackboard-writing-outline content, interactive performance content, independent accomplishment content, while teacher's lecturing content and group discussion content have no apparent tendency. The author also makes Pearson correlation analysis of learning and content preferences. The results show that there are significant positive correlations in the following parts: visual learning style and blackboard-writing-outline content; auditory learning style and teacher's lecturing content, interactive performance content; kinesthetic learning style and group discussion content; tactile learning style and teacher's lecturing content, interactive performance content; group learning style and group discussion content; individual learning style and independent accomplishment content. And there are significant negative correlations in the following parts:group learning style and individual accomplishment content, individual learning style and group discussion content.According to research data analysis and research discoveries, the author puts forward some views and suggestions on how to design and compile contents of College English teaching materials based on preferences of learners'learning styles with the aim of promoting the construction of domestic College English teaching materials and College English teaching.