A Correlative Study On Junior High School Students’ Perceptual Learning Styles,Reading Strategies And Reading Performance

According to the Compulsory Education English Curriculum Standard(2011),it is an important task for students to improve the basic language skills in listening,speaking,reading and writing.Reading is one of the most important ways for language learners to obtain information.How to effectively improve students’ reading performance in junior high school is a meaningful and challenging work for the front-line educators.We should think and explore how to help junior high school students understand their own learning style tendency and the use of reading strategies,and guide them to develop learning styles reasonably,and to use strategies to improve their English reading performance.The purpose of this paper is to explore the correlation on perceptual learning style tendency,English reading strategies and English reading performance,and to give some teaching suggestions based on the results of the study.The research questions of this paper are:(1)What is the current situation of junior high school students’ perceptual learning style tendency?(2)What is the current situation of junior high school students’ use of reading strategies?(3)Is perceptual learning style tendency related to the use of reading strategies? If so,what is the connection?(4)Is perceptual learning style tendency related to English reading performance? If so,what is the connection?(5)Is the use of reading strategies related to English reading performance? If so,what is the connection? The research objects of this study are 104 students in two classes from Grade 8 of a junior high school in Yibin City,Sichuan Province.In the process of the study,questionnaires,test and quantitative analysis are used.There are two questionnaires.The first one is based on Reid(1984)Perceptual Learning Style Theory.Visual,auditory,tactile and kinesthetic are investigated.The second questionnaire is based on the reading strategy questionnaire under Oxford(1989)Learning Strategy Theory,which is jointly compiled by William Baker & kamonpan boonkit(2004).The reading strategies include memory,cognition,compensation,meta-cognition,emotion and social strategy.English reading comprehension test is used for gathering English reading grades.Data collected from two questionnaires and English reading comprehension test are analyzed by SPSS 23.0.The results show that:(1)At present,the main perceptual learning style of junior high school students is visual;the perceptual learning style tendency of junior high school students has the characteristics of diversification.(2)At present,most junior high school students have reading strategies which are often used in the process of reading,but the overall level of reading strategies is not high;the most often-used reading strategy is cognitive strategy.(3)The perceptual learning style tendency has a correlation with the use of reading strategies: social strategy takes the most share in tactile;compensation strategy takes the most share in kinesthetic;cognitive strategy takes the most share in visual;auditory strategy takes the least share in cognitive.(4)The perceptual learning style tendency is related to English reading performance,but this correlation only exists in visual and tactile;the average reading performance of visual perceptual learning style objects is better than that of other objects;the more main perceptual learning styles the objects have,the better English reading performance they get.(5)The use of reading strategies is related to English reading performance;the objects with major reading strategies have better English reading performance than those without major reading strategies;the objects with meta-cognitive strategies have the highest average score in English reading and the lowest in emotional strategies.From the results,the author suggests that teachers can adjust their teaching according to the students’ perceptual learning style tendency and try to teach according to students’ personalities;teachers can help students understand and develop their own learning style tendency,especially pay attention to the development of the styles positively related to reading strategies and English reading performance;in order to improve students’ English reading performance,teachers can help them understand reading strategies,and improve their awareness and the use of reading strategies.