A Study On English Perceptual Learning Styles Of Middle School Students

In recent years, learner's learning style has attracted increasing attentions. A large number of studies have been conducted to investigate the learners' learning style preferences as well as the correlation between learning style preferences and such variables as gender, grade and English language achievement and so forth. However,most studies focused on the learning styles of university students, few of them investigated those of middle school students. In addition, among those studies, most were conducted to examine the learning style preferences of juniors or seniors respectively(juniors refer to junior middle school students and seniors refer to senior middle school students in this study).The present study investigated the learning style preferences of middle school students covering two groups —— juniors and seniors. Using Reid's(1984) Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire, together with two standard English tests and interviews, this study was conducted to explore the learning styles of 300 students who were randomly selected from Wuhan No. 4 Middle School. Specifically, the present study mainly focused on the following parts: the similarities and differences of seniors' and juniors' English learning styles, the correlation between middle school students' learning style preferences and gender as well as their English academic achievement.The results revealed: 1) Both juniors and seniors showed multiple learning style preferences and they preferred all the six perceptual learning styles including visual,auditory, kinesthetic, tactile, group and individual learning. Seniors showed a stronger preference to multiple learning styles than juniors. In addition, there were significant differences in visual, group and individual learning styles between juniors and seniors. 2)With regard to the correlation between learning style preferences and gender, there were significant differences between juniors and seniors. Specifically, there was a correlation between juniors' learning style preferences and gender. Female juniors showed multiplelearning style preferences, while male juniors showed no preference for any perceptual learning style. In contrast, there was no obvious correlation between seniors' learning style preferences and gender. 3) There were correlations between learning style preferences and English academic achievement of both juniors and seniors. High academic achievers appeared to have more learning style preferences than low academic achievers. As for juniors, English academic achievements were positively correlated to all the six kinds of perceptual learning styles. However, seniors' English academic achievements had significant correlations to only two learning styles —— individual learning and group learning style preferences. Seniors' English academic achievements were positively correlated to individual learning style, negatively correlated to group learning style while showed no obvious correlation to visual, auditory, tactile and kinesthetic learning styles.The findings of the current study may have some pedagogical implications for English teaching and learning. It can facilitate English teachers in middle schools to realize how students can learn most effectively and then examine and modify their teaching styles and strategies to suit students' different learning styles and help middle school students identify their own learning styles and then employ more effective strategies that will work towards their own learning style preferences.