Cultivating Students’ Learning Strategies Based On Different Learning Styles In Collese Intensive Reading

Teaching students in accordance of their aptitudes is an educational philosophy advocated for centuries home and abroad. The very beginning of this educational philosophy can be traced back to the ancient Chinese sage Confucius more than2000years ago. Modern and contemporary teaching theories and practice have pushed this thought forward to a new stage. Differentiated instruction featured by student-centered teaching, which is adaptive to learners’ learning styles to satisfy the learners’ needs, has become common practice. The core of differentiated instruction lies in optimizing learning efficiency by making full use of learners’ learning styles. However, the researches on differentiated instruction which combines learners’ learning style with teaching practice in intensive English Reading to optimize learning process are rare or lack in-depth exploration both at home and abroad. This paper tries to explore the practical ways to cultivate the learning strategies based on learners’ learning styles in intensive English Reading with a method integrating theoretical and authentic survey analysis.The paper explores a large amount of literature on the definition, categorization of learning styles and learning strategies. It summarizes the relations between the learning styles and learning strategies, and stresses on the necessity and feasibility of extending learners’ learning styles by cultivating learning strategies. Then it sums up the striking problems learners encounter in the college English lessons, especially in their intensive English course learning. Teacher-based teaching/instruction and learners lacking effective learning strategies which fit readily into their learning styles are mainly to blame. And the paper tries to solve the problems by learning strategies cultivating. It discusses the theoretical and empirical methods which are going to be employed. Questionnaire survey, which is Learning Style Survey:Assessing Your Learning Styles by Andrew D. Cohen and Rebecca. L. Oxford&Julie C. Chi, and the interviews on learning styles have been conducted in two intensive English reading classes of freshmen and sophomores in Foreign Languages Institute of Sichuan Normal University. On the basis of large quantity of data collected in the survey and interview, it argues that it is rather necessary and feasible to cultivate learners’learning strategies on the basis of their learning styles. Teachers should shift their role in the teaching/instructing process from teacher-based type to student-centered one and be well aware of the significance of cultivating learning strategies in accordance with specific learner’s learning style. Different learning strategies cultivating methods should be employed according to the learners’corresponding learning styles, which are categorized as auditory learners, visual learners and tactile/kinesthetic learners types.At last, the paper discusses the limitations in the study and offers suggestions for a more reliable and valid future relevant study:enlarging the scope of research objects (age groups, learners levels, etc.), extending the span of study time, increasing the dimensions of learning styles to be studied and comparing/analyzing results from the pre-survey and after-survey questionnaires.