Relationship Between Foreign Language Learning Styles And Learning Strategies Of Rural Junior Middle School Students

The 2011 National Standard for Compulsory English Curriculum has made it clear that students should be guided to have an integral development on learning strategies by considering their learning styles, so as to gradually and orderly form their English language learning strategies which are not only compatible with their individual learning styles but also can effectively improve their language learning efficiency. Ehrman& Oxford (1990) also proposed that the most effective learning depended on the mobilization of both learning strategies and learning styles. It is obvious that learning style and learning strategy has been playing an important role in foreign language learning. The ignorance of either learning style or learning strategy may jeopardize foreign language learning. However, most researches at home just pay attention to learning style or learning strategy singly, and there is still a huge paucity in the research on the relationship between these two items. On the other hand, education in different areas has not only commonness but also its own characteristics. Rural education is different from urban education, and the distribution of learning style and strategies and the relationship between them among rural students also has its own characteristics. However, the long-existing urban-rural dualistic structure in China leads to an obvious inclination towards urban students in previous studies.This study investigated the relationship between language learning styles and learning strategies of rural junior middle school English learners. The study has the following purposes:1. find out the distribution of rural junior middle school EFL students’language learning style preferences; 2. get detailed information about rural junior middle school EFL students’use of language learning strategies; 3. explore how do learning styles affect the use and choice of learning strategies of rural junior middle school EFL students.Participants were 227 second-year junior middle school students from two rural junior middle schools selected in Jiujiang city, Jiangxi province, including 109 boys and 118 girls. The Style Analysis Survey (SAS) (from Reid,2002), which was invented by Oxford in 1993, and the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) (from Oxford, 2008), which was invented by Oxford in 1989, were used respectively to investigate the distribution of students’learning style preferences and learning strategies. All useful data obtained from the returned questionnaires on students’learning style and learning strategies were analyzed with descriptive statistics derived from SPSS 16.0, including item means, standard deviations, variances, and multivariable correlation analysis.Results reveal that compared with other learning styles, rural junior middle school EFL students showed more preference for auditory, hands-on, extroverted, intuitive and global. As for learning strategy use, rural junior middle school EFL students’frequency of strategy use fell into a medium-use range. They used social strategies and meta-cognitive strategies most frequently, followed by affective strategies, cognitive strategies, compensation strategies and memory strategies. Most importantly, multivariable correlation analysis indicated that visual, analytic, closure-oriented, extroverted and intuitive had a positively strong correlation with the overall average of strategy frequency use. The stronger one’s visual, analytic, closure-oriented, extroverted and intuitive learning preferences were, the higher his or her overall frequency use of strategies was. Besides, a statistically significant and negative relationship was found between introverted and the group of memory strategies and the group of cognitive strategies. The stronger preference students showed for introverted, the less advantageous they were in using memory strategies and cognitive strategies. In addition, open was found associated negatively with meta-cognitive strategies. The stronger preference students showed for open, the worse they were at self-monitoring, self-evaluating and self-managing in learning process.Generally speaking, this study contributed a practical reference to the rural EFL field by presenting more clear information on the relationship between language learning styles and learning strategies of rural junior middle school English learners.