A Research On Correlation Between English Learning Styles And Vocabulary Learning Strategies Of Senior High School Students

During the past twenty years, improving learner autonomy has been well recognizedamong educators and researchers in language teaching area. Thus, the research focus hasbeen shifted from language itself, materials and teaching method to language learners. On theone hand, language learners choose learning method according to their individual differences;on the other hand, language teachers pay attention to adapting their teaching method incorrespondence to individual characteristics in the process of teaching. This shift calls for thetransformation of teaching research emphasis. As a result, learning styles and learningstrategies have been the hot issues in teaching researches. According to the EnglishCurriculum Standards for Compulsory Education and Senior High Schools, senior high schoolstudents are required to master3300words and400-500collocations which is the standard ofgrade8. But for most senior high school students, grasping vocabulary is very difficult, andone of the reasons is that they are not good at using vocabulary learning strategies which aresuitable for their learning styles. Though in recent years, the researches about learning stylesand learning strategies are in full bloom, the researches about senior high school students arestill rare. Therefore, based on a guided survey, this research aims to explore the correlationbetween learning styles and vocabulary learning strategies of senior high school studentsThe researches about learning styles and vocabulary learning strategies could be tracedback to1970s, and their definitions and classifications are also numerous. This thesis firstlymakes a clear literature review about studies on learning styles and vocabulary learningstrategies, and finally decides to adopt Reid’s definition and classification about learningstyles which contain auditory, visual, kinesthetic, tactile, group and individual learning styles.And for vocabulary learning strategies, this thesis adopts Cohen’s definition and Li Songhao’sclassification. Li Songhao classifies vocabulary learning strategies as metacognitive strategy,cognitive strategy, resource strategy and used strategy, furthermore, he divides cognitivestrategy into using dictionary, guessing words’ meaning, taking notes, guessing meaning fromthe context, repetition, word-formation, and using imagery for memorization.Both quantitative and qualitative research methods are employed in this research, and Reid’s perceptual learning style questionnaire and Li Songhao’s vocabulary learning strategiesquestionnaires are adopted. The questionnaires are distributed to200students (113boys and97girls) of Grade1from Shandong No.1high school, and all the data is collected andanalyzed by SPSS19.0. The questionnaire is to know the current situation of learning stylesand vocabulary learning strategies applied by senior high school students so as to find out thecorrelations between leaning styles and vocabulary learning strategies..Through analysis and discussion, the research results show that visual learning style hascorrelation with most of the vocabulary learning strategies. Tactile learning style only has thecorrelation with taking notes strategies. Furthermore, auditory learning style has correlationwith taking notes, repetition and used strategies. Group learning style has correlation withused strategies. Kinesthetic learning style has correlation with repetition strategies Last butnot least, individual learning style has correlation with metacognitive strategies and guessingstrategies. On the other hand, cognitive strategies are more adopted by all kinds of studentswith different learning styles. But the metacognitive and used strategies are only used by afew of students. Moreover, resource strategy only has correlation with visual learning style.From the above results, some pedagogical suggestions are put forward bu this study. Firstof all, for learners of different learning styles, learning autonomy should be encouraged andteachers’ teaching styles should take into account the different learning styles of studentsSecond, teachers should help learners understand their own cognitive characteristics, andpurposefully guide students to form a more effective vocabulary learning strategies. Inaddition, by using flexible teaching methods, teachers should try to provide more freedom andchoice for students of different learning styles, so as to develop their foreign languagelearning ability. It is sincerely hoped that the present study can play a positive role inpromoting high school English vocabulary teaching.