THE EFFECT OF LEARNING STYLE PREFERENCE ON COURSE ACHIEVEMENT AMONG PRESERVICE ENGLISH TEACHERS

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to explore the effect of preservice English teachers' preferred learning styles and reading strategies on course achievement and other course-related studies. The participants were 28 second-year student teachers from the English Language Teacher (ELT) Education department at Mugla University in Turkey, who were taking the core course Language Acquisition in the spring 2009-2010 academic year. During the course, student teachers were asked to independently read a chapter on Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theories from The Principles of Language learning and teaching by H. D. Brown (2000), develop a poster reflecting those theories, and complete an open-ended questionnaire which aimed to explore their learning style and reading strategy preferences. Students were also informed that this chapter would be covered in the final exam. The data used in the study were student teachers' preferred learning styles, reading strategies, posters and test results. Using the scores from the final exam, 14 students from higher scoring group and 14 students from lower scoring group were chosen for the study. Each group represented 25% of the total test-taking population. Preferred learning styles and reading strategies were qualitatively analyzed. The results showed that student teachers from both groups preferred more or less the same learning styles and reading strategies. Of note, however, was that the students from the lower score group preferred additional reading strategies that appeared to positively affect part of their test results. It was concluded that learning-strategy awareness and training activities can have a constructive impact on ELT course achievement.