A Study Of English Learning Styles Of Chinese Junior High School Students

The concept of learning style is rooted in the classification of psychological types. Since it was introduced into educational field, many researches have been conducted in western countries. Educators have long realized that each individual person has a tendency to both perceive and process information differently. Nevertheless, learning style studies in the Chinese context at intermediate proficiency level are scantly found. Due to the dearth of learning style, the writer conducted this study.There are many different ways to classify learning styles. The writer selected VAK (Visual, Auditory, Tactile/Kinesthetic) for study because of its ease of use and it has gained a great deal of attention. VAK, which is derived from the accelerated learning world, seems to be the most popular model nowadays (Kolb, 1986). In addition, Reid's Style Inventory (Perceptual Learning-Style Preference), which refers to auditory, visual, tactile or kinesthetic, is widely known and used in the western language learning and teaching field.The present study, by means of Action Research, took second-grade students studying at Yuxin Junior High School in Mentougou District, Beijing as its subjects. Class One, Class Three and Class Five were randomly functioned as the experimental classes, receiving a 10-week training while Class Two, Class Four and Class Six as the controlled classes which received no extra treatment, just going through the normal learning procedure. During this period the teachers added some teaching activities which suited tactile orkinesthetic learners in the experimental classes. Meanwhile the researchers made Questionnaire and Classroom observations, wrote Teaching diaries and interviewed some students at the end of the term. Both groups were administered a pretest and a posttest.The results of the Questionnaire shows that among one hundred and thirty-five subjects only nineteen students like to learn by listening. The number of auditory learners is the least, composing 14.07%. There are twenty-one students prefer to learn through seeing, making up 15.56%. More than seventy percent (70.37%) of the subjects like learning through tactile/kinesthetic ways. The results also tell us that there are more girl auditory learners than boy auditory learners; meanwhile more boys may rely on visual presentation. It is easy to see that there are obvious differences of learning style between high-academic achievers and underachievers. Among thirty top students twelve students are visual learners, composing 40%; fifteen students are auditory learners, making up 50%; only three are tactile /kinesthetic learners, composing 10%. Meanwhile in the same number of underachievers there are two visual learners, composing 6.67%; one auditory learners, making up 3.33%; twenty- seven respond better to hands-on or kinesthetic activates, composing 90%.After one semester's experiment the posttest scores of the experimental subjects are at least seven scores higher than those of the controlled students. More underachievers got higher grades in the tests. The results of interviewshow that most of the students believed the added teaching activities were helpful for their language learning. It can be inferred that their interests and motivation were also enhanced after the training.