A Study On Mismatch Between English Teaching Styles And Learning Styles In Senior High Schools

Learning style is one of the focuses in second language acquisition (SLA), and it is also an important content of the study of individual learners and individual differences. Teaching students in accordance with their aptitude, as the main content of quality-oriented education, requires the deep and wide study on teaching styles and learning styles. The previous studies have proved that the matching of teaching and learning styles is of great value for teaching students in accordance with their aptitude from theoretical and practical perspectives. Direct at the mismatch between senior high school students'English learning styles and English teachers'teaching styles, the current study aims to investigate the mismatch of senior high school students'English learning styles and teachers'teaching styles so that we can get to know clearly the mismatch patterns. Therefore, three questions are addressed in this study: 1) what are the distribution characteristics of senior high school students'learning styles? 2) What are the distribution characteristics of senior high school English teachers'teaching styles? 3) What are the mismatch patterns of learning and teaching styles?The participants came from two senior high schools, one was Yang Ling Senior High School, and the other was Yao Zhou Senior High School. There were 143 students in Grade Two and Grade Three and 19 English teachers from Yang Ling Senior High School. And there were 100 students in Grade Two and Grade Three and 21 English teachers from Yao Zhou Senior High School.The instruments in the study were two questionnaires, which were written by the author based on Andrew D. Cohen, Rebecca L. Oxford and Julie C. Chi's Learning Style Inventory, Dr. Rancourt's The Means of Acquiring Knowledge Inventory,Joy Reid's Learning Style Inventory and Renzulli & Smith's (2002) Nine Teaching Approaches Preference. One was senior high school students'English learning styles Inventory (LSI), and the other was senior high school English teachers'teaching styles Inventory (TSI). In order to improve their validity and reliability, 20 senior high school students and 3 English teachers in Xian Yang Senior High School were chosen randomly to fill the questionnaires. The data collected from these questionnaires were treated by SPSS17.0, and the items whose score were lower than 0.2 were deleted. The rest of the items consisted of the questionnaires. In April in 2010, the questionnaires were sent to two English teachers in Yang Ling Senior High School and Yao Zhou Senior High School. the number of learning styles inventory delivered was 260, among which 255 was collected and the valid questionnaires were 243; the number of teaching styles questionnaires delivered was 43, and 40 of them were collected and they were all valid. The data collected were treated by SPSS17.0, the research findings were:1) The distribution characteristics of senior high school students'English learning styles were: from cognitive learning styles, students mostly preferred intuitive style, global style, and concrete-sequential style, while they did not favor introverted style, extroverted style, and closure-oriented style; from teaching approach preference, they mostly favored co-learning teaching, specific discussion and lecture, but they did not prefer imitation, individual learning, and group learning.2) The distribution characteristics of teachers'teaching styles were: from cognitive teaching styles aspect, teachers preferred extroverted teaching style, concrete-sequential teaching style, and open teaching style, while they did not favor intuitive teaching style, closure-oriented style, and introverted style; from teaching approach perspective, teachers preferred lecture, individual learning and imitation, but they did not favor game teaching, specific discussion, and multimedia-aided teaching.3) The mismatching patterns were: from cognitive style perspective, senior high school students favored intuitive style, global style, and concrete-sequential style, while teachers preferred extroverted teaching style, concrete-sequential teaching style, and open teaching style; from teaching approach preference, students favored co-learning teaching, specific discussion and lecture; while teachers preferred lecture, individual learning and imitation.According to the above research findings, the implications of the study for English teaching were:1) English teachers should pay much attention to the mismatches of teaching and learning styles and scientifically evaluate learning and teaching styles.2) Teachers should take multi teaching styles to meet students'multi learning styles. Finally, the limitations of the study and the recommendations for further study are pointed out.