A Study Of The Correlation Between Learning Styles In English Classroom And Students’ Achievements In English Learning

Nowadays，the focus of teaching researches has been shifted fromhow to teach to how to learn. In foreign language teaching,student-centered teaching idea appears. Because of this kind of newteaching idea, scholars begin to pay more attention to the differences ofindividual learners. Learning style, one of the factors as individualdifferences, is increasingly favored by the researchers.In the west, many researchers have done empirical researches onlearning styles. In China, there are still some empirical researches onlearning styles, but their objects are mostly college students or secondlanguage acquisition learners, and researches on senior middle schoolstudents are relatively few. On the basis of previous studies, the authorconducted a study of the correlation between learning styles in Englishclassroom and students· achievements in English learning based on thePerceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire (PLSPQ) in1984,designed by Joy Reid. The study involved in153high school studentsfrom Inner Mongolia Normal University Affiliated Middle School. Thepurpose of this paper is to investigate high school students· learning styleand its relationship with the English achievements.The results of the research are:(1) Senior high school students prefer individual and visual learningstyles most; kinesthetic learning style is the least preference.(2) The high and middle achievers prefer individual and tactilelearning styles while low achievers choose auditory and group learningstyles more.(3) In comparison with male students, female students show thehigher preference for visual, tactile and group learning styles; while male students prefer auditory, kinesthetic, individual learning styles.（4）Learning style preferences for males and females are associatedwith their English learning achievements. Males who prefer to auditorylearning style have a higher score on listening; females who prefer tovisual learning style have a better score on reading.The implications of the research are that educators must understandand respect individuals· diverse differences and make efforts to enhancetheir learning interests. Moreover, teachers should raise students·awareness on learning styles and match with even stretch with learners·styles by alternative approaches.