Application Of Perceptual Learning Style Theory To Senior High School EFL Vocabulary Teaching

Vocabulary is language’s central element and it is closely relevant to one’s evolution of basic language skills in language learning. Vocabulary teaching, thus, is of vital importance in language teaching. Perceptual learning style, aimed to describe individual variations of language learners in using one or more senses to understand, organize, and retain experience(Reid, 1987), is closely relevant to vocabulary learning and teaching(Kinsella, 2002).Vocabulary teaching in senior high schools, which still conforms to the traditional teaching approaches to uniformly teach students and therefore neglects their individual differences, has got a large number of troubles. Students are discouraged at the fact that it is so hard for them to recall these expressions and words on the lists, to say nothing of bringing them into practice. Teachers, having spent a great deal of energy and time on vocabulary in and after class, are depressed at the fact that the teaching efficiency and results do not match up with what they have paid out.To help students preserve expressions and new words and to enhance middle school vocabulary teaching efficiency, the writer utilizes perceptual learning style theory into vocabulary teaching. Teaching exercise, exams and questionnaire are used interactively in daily study, which is accomplished in a first-grade class in a senior high school. A learning style survey is firstly offered to the students and it is found to illustrate a strong visual preference through the assessment results’ analyses. A number of strategy trainings are then offered by the researcher according to the learning styles of students, who are divided into four groups: auditory learning style group, visual learning style group, mixed learning style group and haptic learning style group. After that, lectures are given by the teacher on vocabulary by accommodating to their learning styles consciously. Dissimilar homework and activities after lesson are provided. Word dictations are administered to the students to examine their immediate mastery of expressions and fresh words during daily teaching practice. Two vocabulary exams are offered to students to test their general vocabulary knowledge before and after the teaching practice at the same time. Microsoft Excel and Paired Samples Test are used to analyze the vocabulary exam outcomes and dictation.The writer finds that students’ retention of vocabulary is highly improved from the initial average 11 or 12 words out of 20 words to 14 or 15 through analyses of students’ average dictation marks. Meanwhile, the findings of the two integrative vocabulary tests in a similar way show that students’ vocabulary accomplishment records have been greatly Improved, with the average records improved by nearly 8 scores(from 44 to 52). The analyses show learning’s identification styles helps students in accomplishing their own strengths and weaknesses and helps them to learn in a more dynamic way, like consciously and actively selecting these strategies considerably suiting them and communicating actively with the teacher after class. The study’s findings, in a similar way, show that perceptual learning style theory helps to accomplish student-centered classroom in vocabulary teaching.