Young EFL learners' learning styles: Matches and mismatches between learners' preferences and their teachers' perceptions


Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Bursa Uludağ Üniversitesi, EĞİTİM BİLİMLERİ ENSTİTÜSÜ, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2011

Tezin Dili: İngilizce

Öğrenci: Özlem Yahyaoğlu Yardım

Danışman: ZÜBEYDE SİNEM GENÇ

Özet:

The purpose of this study is to investigate the preferred learning styles of the fifth grade EFL students in state schools, the perceptions of EFL teachers about the fifth grade EFL students’ learning styles, the correlation among EFL students’ preferred learning styles, the correlation among EFL teachers’ perceptions on students’ preferred learning styles and, the main matches or mismatches between the learners’ preferred learning styles and their teachers’ perceptions of learning styles. 193 fifth grade students from four different state primary schools and 63 EFL teachers from different state primary schools participated in the study. In order to collect the data for the study, two questionnaires were administered. The first questionnaire was administered to students, the second questionnaire was administered to EFL teachers. The two questionnaires included Five-point Likert type items in which the participants were asked to declare their degree of agreement from 1)Strongly agree; to 2)Agree; 3)Undecided; 4)Disagree; 5)Strongly disagree. Within the framework of the previous research on learning styles, the questionnaires involved eleven categories (extroverted, introverted, intuitive random, sensing sequential, closure oriented, open perceiving, thinking, feeling, auditory, visual and kinesthetic learning styles). Based on those eleven categories, the data were analysed by means of Mann-Whitney U test. Relationships between variables were analysed by Pearson Correlations Analysis. Findings indicated that open perceiving was the most preferred learning style by the fifth grade EFL students, but feeling was perceived as the most preferred learning style of students by the EFL teachers. Introverted learning style was the least preferred learning style by students and it was also perceived as the least preferred learning style of students by the EFL teachers. Moreover, the learning style preferences of the fifth class learners changed according to gender and the English level of their families. However, EFL teachers were not totally aware that gender and the English level of their families affect the learning style preferences of the fifth grade EFL students. The results also indicated that the fifth class students could be called eclectic learners, they could use the combination of learning styles while learning English, yet EFL teachers were quite unable to address the variation of students’ learning preferences during the English lessons.