A Study Of The Causes And The Transformation Of High School Students With English Learning Difficulties-from The Perspective Of Learning Styles

Nowadays, it is advocated that students should be the focus of the attention ofthe teachers, and that teachers should develop their own teaching style with distinctcharacteristics. The focus in English teaching and research has been transformed fromteachers’ teaching to the students themselves and their learning processes. Therefore,individual learner differences have become the most important feature in research.Among all the factors that influence the students’ learning style is the attention toreflecting the students’ learning differences. Students with English learningdifficulties, in this thesis, refer to those who are only poor in English learning, whilstdoing well in their other subjects. Those students have a normal IQ but have greatdifficulties in learning and improving their English.Grounded on the theory of learning style, this study has combined quantitativeand qualitative research methods, utilizing means such as questionnaires andinterviews. In order to understand the learning styles of the students who experiencelearning difficulties, the questionnaire survey is carried out first among the Grade Twostudents in the writer’s school. Then depending on the results and problems reflectedin the survey, a face-to-face interview is held to delve deeper into the real reasonbehind the phenomenon and the real crux of poor performance of the students withEnglish learning difficulties. After that, an experimental study is carried out in the twoclasses the writer is teaching; one class as the experimental class, the other as thecontrol class. The focus of the experiment is to instruct the students to match properlearning approaches and strategies with their learning style and help the teacher matchthe teaching style with the students’ learning style in order to improve theperformance of the students with English learning difficulties.The study mainly focuses on several aspects of those students with Englishlearning difficulties, such as their learning style, their learning strategy selection andthe transformation strategy. As a result of this study, we have drawn the followingconclusions:1) The students lack comprehensive knowledge and understanding of their ownlearning styles. The students with English learning difficulties have poor self-studyability and their learning strategies conflict with their learning styles. The samestudent may have two or more kinds of learning styles. All the students,(those with English learning difficulties and those students who are good at English study) belongto the group of auditory learning style, but the students’ main learning styles can vary.Gender differences in learning styles do not exist among students with Englishlearning difficulties.2) The teachers all teach using the same method, and teaching strategy does notmatch students’ learning styles, which is another main reason for the poorperformance of the students with English learning difficulties.In the transformation of the students with English learning difficulties, thewriter utilizes multiple teaching strategies centered on auditory teaching strategy inthe experimental class. After a year of teaching experimentally, significant differencesin the exam results were found in the experimental class and in the control class. Theaverage score in the experimental class is significantly higher than that in the controlclass. Students with English learning difficulties also have made rapid progress andtheir grades have improved to different degrees. Several students with Englishlearning difficulties have already entered into the medium level group. Theexperiment shows that adjusting the teaching methods and teaching strategies tomatching the students’ learning style is of obvious help in the success of thetransformation of students with English learning difficulties.According to the results of the study and analysis of the results, the writer putsforward three approaches to the successful transformation of the students with Englishlearning difficulties: first, students should understand their own learning style, learn tomobilize various senses and adopt multiple learning methods; Second, in the processof English learning, students should match learning strategies with their learningstyles; Third, in the process of English teaching, teachers should adopt and diversifyteaching strategies to match the students’ diverse learning styles.