An Empirical Research On The Relationship Between High School Students’ Learning Styles And English Achievements

In recent years,"student-centered" teaching concept has been paid more and more attention to in China;New English Curriculum Standard for Senior High School also requires that students’ individual differences should be fully considered in English teaching.Learning styles are defined by Keefe as “the characteristic cognitive,affective and psychological behaviors that serve as relatively stable indicators of how learners perceive,interact and respond to the learning environment”.Therefore,research on learning styles has gradually become an important topic.In order to research the influence of different learning styles on students’ English achievements,the author has done researches on the learning styles of senior high students in three high schools in Kunming.The study used Learning Style Survey designed by Cohen,Oxford and Chi in2001 to investigate learning styles of totally 459 the first-year and second-year senior students,and their English test’s scores were used as the parameter of English learning achievements to conduct the research.The main research questions of this study are:(1)What is the general situation of senior high school students’ English learning styles?(2)Will demographic factors,namely grades,gender,and liberal arts students/science students,influence senior high school students’ English learning styles? If yes,which one(s)will make a contribution to English learning styles?(3)What is the relationship between senior high school students’ learning styles and their English achievements?There three main findings in the study:(1)The general situation of the students’ learning styles tend to be visual,introverted,concrete-sequential,closure,global,synthesizing,leveler,deductive,field-independent,reflective and metaphoric.(2)These demographic variables can influence students’ learning styles.The results show that the first-year students tend to be more analytic,sharpener and field-independent,and the second-year students prefer open learning style more;female students tend to be more visual,concrete-sequential,closure,particular and reflective,and males prefer random-intuitive,open,global,analytic,field-dependent and literal learning styles more;liberal arts students show more preferences for visual,concrete-sequential and particular learning styles,while science students tend to be more random-intuitive,open,global,impulsive.(3)Specific learning styles can influence students’ English achievements,which shows that field-dependent and particular learning styles can influence students’ overall,reading and correction achievements;field-dependent and impulsive learning styles can affect listening achievements;field-dependent learning style has an effect on cloze achievements;field-dependent,open and particular learning styles can influence grammar completion achievements.Except field-dependent and open learning styles play negative roles in relationships,others all play positive roles in students’ English achievements.Based on this research,the author puts forward the following suggestions for schools,teachers and students.First of all,schools,teachers,and students all should contribute awareness on learning styles,and normalize learning styles test in order to adjust teaching and learning methods in time.Secondly,schools should organize teaching research activities related to learning styles.Thirdly,teachers need to adjust teaching styles to fit learning styles held by the class,and conduct learning strategy training for students,while trained learning strategies need to be corresponding to the learning styles that positively influence students’ English achievements.Finally,students should fully understand learning styles and related characteristics held by them,and know how to make good use of learning styles’ strengths and compensate weaknesses to improve learning efficiency;pay attention to the changes in their own learning styles and academic achievements.