A Comparative Study Of Chinese And Iranian EFL Learners' Perceptual Learning Styles

Learning style was first introduced in psychology and the movement of learning style from psychology to language learning was done by Witkin and colleagues who brought the concepts of field dependent and field independent in 1962.Dunn(1990)mentions that three-fifths of learning style is determined by genetics and the other two-fifths is determined by external factors(as cited in Rhoads and Gough,2005).External factors such as nationality(Griffiths,2008),culture(Nelson,1995),teaching style,kind of tasks,and educational system or context(Semeijn et al.,1999)also affect the individual's learning style.Learners from Iran and China have different educational philosophy.So it is interesting and necessary to compare perceptual learning style of Chinese students from East Asia where Confucius is dominant and of Iranian students from Middle East where there is no educational philosophy except religion.This study also investigates the relationship between degree,gender,and age with the perceptual learning style of Chinese and Iranian EFL learners.Three-hundred and fifty-one students,including 164 Chinese and 187 Iranian EFL learners,who were studying English as their second language,at Zhejiang University and Azad University of Tehran(Central Branch and Science and Research Branch)answered the perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire and interview.Six separate independent-samples t-tests were run and both descriptive and inferential statistics show first,Iranian EFL learners preferred auditory style,while Chinese EFL learners preferred tactile style;second,the finding shows that M.A students prefer more learning styles than B.A.students;third,the older students preferred auditory,visual,kinesthetic,tactile,and group in comparison to younger ones,fourth,male students preferred individual learning,while female students didn't have a major style.Also the findings of two-way ANOVA show some interactions between independent variables.At the end,limitations,implications,and suggestions for further research are considered.