Identifying students' learning styles to boost EFL learning experience : a case study

Abstract EN

Research on learning styles reveals that individuals vary greatly in the way they learn a foreign language.

Some are analytically oriented and others are globally oriented.

Learners are also more visual, auditory or tactile.

The primary purpose of this study was to identify first year Middle school pupils' learning styles and stimulate further thinking on the extent to which our understanding of learning styles can be applied to teacher training.

The study also explored the different instructing techniques a teacher should apply in order to ensure an adequate accommodation of these styles and bring about positive changes in ways of learning English.

The instruments used in conducting the study on a subject population of 40 pupils were the Barsch Learning Style Inventory (BLSI) and the Brain Dominance Inventory (BDI).

The study resulted in the following findings: (1) All the learning styles modalities targeted by the two instruments manifested themselves in the selected population.

(2) The BDI revealed that the majority of the population under study had left brain dominance.

(3) Statistical analysis of the data revealed that the preferred learning style, as measured by the BLSI, was visual.

Auditory and tactile were second and third respectively.