A Study Of Correlation Between Language Learning Styles And Learning Strategies Of College Non-English Majors

With the rapid development of foreign language teaching theories and researches, an increasing number of researchers have realized the importance of understanding learning process and learner differences. A lot of researches show that individual differences like age, gender, learning style and learning strategy have a direct influence on learners’ language proficiency. Among all the influential factors, learners’ learning style and learning strategy have aroused much interest of a large number of researchers. Although researchers at home and abroad have made a lot of studies concerning language learners’ learning styles and their learning strategies, studies on the correlation between these two factors are relatively scarce. Besides, most of the previous researchers adopt Reid’s Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire. The author of this study adopts Liu Runqing’s Learning Style Survey Scale as it is designed based on the merits of other learning style survey scales and takes Chinese characteristics of English learning and teaching into consideration, thus it can better reflect Chinese students’ English learning style condition.This research is designed to answer the following three questions, of which, question 3 is the focus of the author’s study: 1.What is the overall learning style preference for non-English majors? 2. What learning strategies do non-English majors often adopt? 3. Is there any correlation between college students’ language learning styles and their learning strategies? If there is, how do they correlate with each other? This study aims to bring some inspiration for college English teaching and offer some advice for college students in their English learning.The subjects in this research are 130 sophomores from two colleges of Chengdu University of Technology. Their majors are Survey Technology & Engineering, Geophysics, and Architecture etc. This research uses a questionnaire survey to investigate the subjects’ learning style preferences and their learning strategy use and the correlation between them. The learning style questionnaire is designed based on Liu Runqing’s Description and Use of Preference for Learning Style Survey Scale, and the learning strategy questionnaire is based on Oxford’s Strategies Inventory for Language Learning(SILL).The author applies SPSS 19.0 to analyze the collected data and the research results show:(1) Non-English majors generally prefer serialist, independent, reflective, visual and analytical learning styles supplemented by holist, random, impulsive and auditory learning styles; hand-on learning style and dependent learning style are least preferred.(2) Non-English majors’ use of learning strategies falls into medium frequency. Compensation strategy is the most preferred one, followed by affective strategy, meta-cognitive strategy, memory strategy, cognitive strategy and social strategy.(3) Non-English majors’ learning styles have positive correlation with their learning strategies. All the learning styles have positive correlations with some learning strategies. Analytical learning style has a conspicuous positive correlation with all the six learning strategies, which means analytical learning style has the most significant influence on learning strategy. Visual learning style and auditory learning style are the second influential variables with positive relations with all the learning strategies except for social learning strategy. Serialist learning style has a statistical significance with meta-cognitive and affective strategies. Independent learning style has a positive association with only meta-cognitive learning strategy. Reflective learning style is only positively correlated with compensation strategy.