A Study On Conflicts Between Teaching Styles Of NS Teachers And Learning Styles Of Chinese English Majors

Recent decades have seen a growing number of native English speaker (NS) teachers teaching English in Chinese classrooms. Though they bring with them colorful Western cultures and teaching styles, their teaching does not produce expected results up to date. There are certainly a number of explanations for this phenomenon, but research into learning style and teaching style can provide us with another approach to the explanations.Extensive empirical studies in Western countries and in China have found that the mismatch between the learning styles and the teaching styles is a possible reason for students' poor language performances. However, most of these studies are qualitative in nature using open-ended questions. More rigorous study calls for quantitative methods to pin down the discrepancy in every cognitive dimension among NS teachers and Chinese students. For this purpose, this thesis will address the following research questions:1. What learning style preferences do Chinese English majors have? Are there any general tendencies among them?2. What teaching style preferences do NS English teachers have? Are there any general tendencies among them?3. Are the teaching styles of NS English teachers matched with Chinese students' learning styles?4. Should there be teaching-style and learning-style conflicts in Chinese EFL classrooms, what causes are behind them and how can the conflicts be solved?Using the paired teaching style and learning style identification scales designed by Arthur J. More (1993), the survey study was carried out among 51 Chinese English majors and 10 NS English teachers randomly chosen from Foreign Language Institute in Jiangxi Normal University. The cognitive style dimensions surveyed in this study were 1) global-analytic; 2) verbal-imaginal; 3) concrete-abstract and 4) TEF (trial, error and feedback)-reflective. Employing SPSS13.0 (Statistical Package for Social Science 13.0), statistic analyses, e.g. one-sample K-S test, Chi-square test and paired t-test were at first performed on the data from NS English teachers and Chinese English majors respectively. The results showed that, all the samples were from normal distribution collectivities and among each cognitive style and between each...