Learning Styles and Performance in Second Language Tasks

Learning Styles and Performance in Second Language Tasks

       Andreou (2008) examined associations between students’ learning styles and their academic discipline (science vs. arts) in connection with performance on different second language (L2) verbal fluency tasks, English phonological, syntactic, and semantic tasks.

       The results of his study were the following: First, discipline differences, Arts students displayed a tendency to emphasize a more divergent and assimilative learning preference than science students, who displayed a preference for convergent learning style and had systematically lower scores on phonology and semantics. Second, gender differences, males had a systematically more convergent learning style than females. This study has many implications; first, it suggests that L2 teachers should strive for a balanced teaching style that does not excessively favor any one learning style; rather, one that tries to accommodate multiple learning styles. Second, performance on syntax can be predicted by the use of learning preferences that favor active experimentation and concrete experience such as problem-solving activities and practical experimentation. Third, L2 teachers should be more willing to involve learners in planning lessons and tasks and give them more control over their own learning.

i + 1

Input hypothesis is one of the most well known theories developed by Krashen. He simply stated that L2s are acquired by understanding messages or by receiving comprehensible input (Krashen, 1985). He defined comprehensible input as a bit of language that is read or heard and that is slightly ahead of a learner’s current state of grammatical knowledge. He referred to this current state of knowledge as i and the next stage as i + 1. This principle is very important when it comes to teaching a second language. Teachers should keep in mind that the target language that they want their students to learn should be slightly ahead of the student’s current knowledge. In other words, what teachers want students to learn should not be much difficult than what they already know or what they have learned.

Learning Styles

        With respect to the relationship between learning styles and strategy preferences, motivation, personality type, academic discipline, and learning environment research has explored several hypotheses. First, when comparing more and less effective learners, what was found is that there were differences between the overall learning style of more effective and less effective learners; that is, the dominant style of the more effective language learners was communicative whereas that of the less effective language learners was authority-oriented. Second, learners with different perceptual learning style preferences demonstrated different lexical inferencing ability; learners with certain perceptual learning style preferences benefited more from the explicit instruction. Third, with respect to academic discipline, Art students displayed a tendency to emphasize a more divergent and assimilative learning preference than science students, who displayed a preference for convergent learning style and had systematically lower scores on phonology and semantics. Fourth, as for the learning environment, Blumberg and Auld (2010) found that 73% of learners preferred to take traditional learning courses, while only 25% preferred hybrid and 2% preferred online courses. Fifth, there were significant relationships between language learning strategy and the introverted/extroverted personality type; extroverted students used compensation, cognitive, memory, affective, and social strategies more than did introverted students

           A successful teacher functions a variety of teaching styles and strategies when teaching. This was not always the case when I learned English as a foreign language. Teachers were traditional and tended to feed the learners with forms and structures rather than eliciting the target language. The teaching methods also were conventional as teachers preferred talking almost all the time. This approach diminished the student’s talking time compared to the teacher’s talking time. The curricula, in turn, focused more on the structure than on conversation and speaking tasks; the textbooks never had an audio CD. That traditional teaching environment did not help me learn the language effectively because I was an audio and a visual learner. I could have learned more effectively and successfully through conversational interactions and watching visual target language than from a textbook. However, I was intrinsically motivated and I knew very well that the classroom should not be the only means of learning the language. Therefore, I tried learning the language through a diversity of resources, especially these that suit my learning style such as reading books in the target language, watching movies and listening to the news. I managed to learn the language as a result of motivation and attitude.  It is vital that the teachers use a diversity of teaching styles so that learners with different learning styles and strategies have the opportunity to learn more effectively.