A Correlational Study Of Perceptual Learning Styles And Vocabulary Learning Strategies Of Senior Middle School Students

The purposes of this research are to investigate the characteristics of perceptual learning styles and vocabulary learning strategies use among senior middle school students, and to investigate the correlation between their perceptual learning styles and vocabulary learning strategies. There are three research questions are presented in this research. They are:1. What are the characteristics of perceptual learning styles of senior middle school students?2. What are the characteristics of vocabulary learning strategies of senior middle school students?3. What is the correlation between their perceptual learning styles and vocabulary learning strategies?The participants are 129 students of Grade One from No.1 senior middle school in Cixian, Hebei province. The instruments employed in this research are two questionnaires: one is Joy Reid’s(1987) Perceptual Learning Style Preference Survey(PLSPS), consisting of 30 items of statements so as to measure students’ preferred styles in six categories: visual, auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, group and individual learning styles; the other is Vocabulary Learning Strategies Questionnaire(VLSQ), and is adopted and adjusted on the basis of Norbert Schmitt’s(2002) taxonomy of Vocabulary Learning Strategies. According to Schmitt’s classification, there are five types of vocabulary learning strategies. They are determination strategies, social strategies, memory strategies, cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies.The collected data from these two questionnaires are analyzed with the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences(SPSS) version 13.0. The findings of the descriptive statistics analysis and the Pearson correlation analysis show that:1. The participants have multiple preferences for perceptual learning styles. The visual style is the most popular style; the individual style is the second popular style; the kinesthetic style is the third popular style; the auditory style is the fourth one; the tactile style is the fifth one; the group is the least popular style.2. The participants make use of different vocabulary strategies on a medium level. Among the five different vocabulary strategies, the cognitive strategy is most frequently used; the memory strategy is second frequently used; the determination strategy is the third; the social strategy is the fourth; the metacognitive strategy is the least frequently used one.3. Some perceptual learning styles have significant correlation with several vocabulary learning strategies. The visual and auditory styles learners prefer to choose the memory strategy; and kinesthetic style learners prefer to use cognitive strategy; the tactile style prefer to choose determination strategy; the group style learners favor the social strategy; the individual style learners favor the metacognitive strategy.In a word, the results of this research can provide many useful implications to the teachers and students who are from senior middle schools. For instance, after understanding the students’ learning styles, teachers can apply a suitable method to carry out the teaching of vocabulary. At the same time, teachers can help their students choose the appropriate vocabulary learning strategies in the process of vocabulary learning. Students ought to master several different vocabulary learning strategies. Thus, they can be more efficient in the different vocabulary learning tasks, and finally get better learning results.