A Study On The Relationship Between High School Students’ Learning Style Preferences And Their Explicit Knowledge Level

In recent years, the study of explicit and implicit language knowledge hasbecome one of the heatedly discussed topics at home and abroad. On one hand, therelationship between explicit knowledge and implicit knowledge has always beencontroversial since the two concepts were put forward by Krashen and Bialystok. Onthe other hand, people come to realize the importance of explicit and implicitknowledge for second language acquisition. So scholars have done some study ofexplicit and implicit concepts from each aspect. Explicit and implicit knowledge havetheir research value no matter in theory or in practice. Learning style, as well aslearning strategy, belongs to individual differences. But when learning strategy isdiscussed heatedly, learning style doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Relevantresearches showed that it is good for learners’ learning achievements and learningefficiency if teachers respect students’ learning styles and take various teachingmethods in responding to learners’ learning styles.Having combined the explicit/implicit knowledge with learning style, the authortook an investigation on high school students’ learning style preferences and theirexplicit knowledge. Contrasted with other empirical study, this thesis aims to explorewhether there exists relationship between learners’ learning styles and their explicitknowledge level by using Kolb’s four kinds of learning styles (the diverging style,assimilating style, converging style and accommodating style). It is hoped that thisstudy can make some contribution to English learning and teaching.This study, therefore, was designed to explore the correlation between highschool students’ learning style preferences and their explicit knowledge level by usingKolb’s learning style inventory and two tests of explicit knowledge.93high schoolstudents at a top high school in Chongqing were chosen as the subjects. Afterfrequency analysis and one-way ANOVA analysis, the author found that:First, high school students’ learning style is diverse. Most students belong toindividuals with diverging style (the percentage accounts for48.4%) and assimilating style(31.2%). Relatively, few students prefer to the converging style (only7.5%).Second, the explicit knowledge level of most Chinese high school students staysat a very general level, and only a few of students can acquire explicit knowledge verywell, which may affect the internalization of explicit knowledge. At any rate,language ability is made up of implicit knowledge rather than explicit languageknowledge, and the development of language competence is the implicit knowledgedevelopment (R. Ellis,2005).Lastly, this study shows that different learning styles have relations with explicitknowledge. There exists significant difference for explicit knowledge level indifferent type of learning styles. Students with diverging style or assimilating style canobviously get higher explicit knowledge level than students’ with converging style.Based on the investigation result, the author puts forward five implicationsincluding knowing about students’ learning style preferences, helping studentsdiagnose their learning styles, learning style cultivation and teaching in responding todifferent learning styles. What’s more, in class, teachers should pay more attention tothe cultivation of the students’ explicit knowledge by using different types ofform-focused instruction (such as explicit options, input-based options and so on) inorder to promote the internalization of knowledge.