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1 Journal of Applied Linguistics (Dubai) Available , 1(3); ISSN: Iranian Students Learning Styles Babak Huseynpur 1 *, Hossein Sadeghoghli 1 1. Department of English, Islamic Azad University of Sarab, Sarab, Iran. * Corresponding Author s babak.elsan@gmail.com Abstract Learning styles are a group of variables among other individual differences which have grasped the education researchers attention for over half a century. They consist of a large variety of dimensions and sub-categorizations including, but not limited to, perceptual, cognitive, and social learning styles. Through Wintegerst, DeCapua and Verna s (2002) Learning Style Indicator (LSI) questionnaire, the current study aimed to probe the status of individual activity, group activity, and project orientations of Iranian senior secondary students who study English as a compulsory subject matter at schools. Running the analysis through SPSS 22, the results of the current study revealed that three variables namely, individual activity, group activity, and project orientations were all common among first-grade students of senior secondary schools in Tehran, the capital city of Iran. The results also indicated that there were a nearly strong positive correlation between group activity orientation and project orientation, r=.48, at p<.01, and a strong negative correlation between individual and group activity orientations, r=.50, at p<.01; whereas, there was no significant correlation between individual activity orientation and project orientation of the participants learning styles. The findings are discussed and some pedagogical implications have been proposed. Keywords: learning styles, EFL, individual activity, group activity, project orientation, individual differences, Iranian, second language, foreign language. I. INTRODUCTION Scholars have defined learning styles differently and have discussed it in various dimensions. Reid defines learning styles as an individual s natural, habitual, and preferred way(s) of absorbing, processing, and retaining new information and skills (Reid, 1995, p. viii). According to Felder and Henriques (1995) learning styles are the ways in which an individual characteristically acquires, retains, and retrieves information (p. 21). Keefe (1979) asserts that learning styles are cognitive, affective, and physiological traits that are relatively stable indicators of how learners perceive, interact with, and respond to the learning environment (p.4). Using learning styles as an umbrella term, Salimi and Huseynpur (2015) in an attempt to propose a comprehensive definition assert that learning styles are a wide range of interrelated variables concerned with the ways individuals learn or prefer to learn new information, and variables which affect the learning and cognitive development of the learners including various dimensions such as: perceptual, cognitive, personality, motivational, strategic, and environmental learning styles. (p. 21) 21

2 Based on the intended frameworks and dimensions, scholars have developed various instruments to assess learners learning styles. These instruments have been mostly developed by general pedagogy scholars such as Riding s (1991) model of cognitive style and his Cognitive Styles Analysis (CSA) and Kolb s (1976) Learning Style Inventory (LSI) (cited in Coffield, Moseley, Hall & Ecclestone, 2004). Although, some EFL/ESL researchers have developed and normed some instruments such as Reid s (1987, 1995) Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire for investigating the language learning styles, their questionnaire items mostly lack any reference to language learning and convey the sense of general learning styles rather than language learning styles. One of the instruments developed to measure second/foreign language learners learning styles is Wintegerst, Decapua and Verna s (2002) Learning Style Indicator (LSI). Learning Style Indicator has been developed due to the shortcomings of the Reid s Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire (PLSPQ). Wintergerst, DeCapua, and Itzen (2001) conducted a number of studies to check the validity and reliability of the PLSPQ. Conducting confirmatory factor analysis and subsequent interviews including direct and open-ended questions, Wintergerst et al. (2001) revealed that some items of the PLSPQ were not clearly measuring the intended learning styles. They raised the internal consistency reliability through omitting 6 items and regrouping the remaining items under three learning style variables namely: (1) Group Activity (a learner s preference of learning best when he or she works in a pair or in a group), (2) Individual Activity, which refers to a student s preference to learn on his or her own, and (3) Project, incorporating tactile, visual, and kinesthetic items. Conducting a research on three groups of L2 learners: Russian EFL students, Russian ESL students and Asian (specifically Chinese, Korean, and Japanese) ESL students, Wintergerst, DeCapua, and Verna (2003) reported that these three groups preferred group activities more than individual work, and the Russian EFL and Asian ESL students favoured project work as well as group activities. Wintergerst et al. (2003) further investigated the relationship among learning styles (IAO, GAO, and PO). They reported that there was a significant moderate relationship between GAO and PO in Russian EFL students (r=.46 at p<.01) and Asian ESL students (r=.40 at p<.01). However, there was no significant relationship between GAO and PO in Russian ESL students. Moreover, they found no significant relationship between GAO and IAO on the one hand, and IAO and PO on the other hand in any of three groups of learners namely Russian EFL, Russian ESL, and Asian ESL learners. Whereas, Palabıyık (2014), who used Reid s (1987) PLSPQ to probe Turkish 9 th grade high school students perceptual learning styles preferences, revealed that there was a strong negative relationship between individual and group learning styles, r(98) = -.60, p<.01. The researchers who use LSI as an instrument to measure the L2 learners learning styles would find it difficult to compare their findings with other studies. Since the LSI is an almost new instrument, there are a few studies in which LSI has been used. On the other hand, the items of LSI are taken from PLSPQ which are differently grouped to form the subcategories of the learning styles scales. However, the group activity and individual 22

3 activity in both instruments are almost measuring the same concepts. Besides, project activity in LSI involves the items of the kinaesthetic, tactile and visual learning styles. Although there are many studies that share similar findings regarding the L2 learners learning styles, some other studies have obtained different or even contradictory results to those of the abovementioned studies. One of the studies in this respect which was conducted in Iran is Riazi and Mansoorian s (2008) investigation into Iranian EFL learners learning styles. According to the findings of this study, they obtained similar results in line with Reid s (1987) study. They surveyed 300 Iranian EFL students who were learning English at language institutes in different cities in Iran. They found that Iranian EFL students preferred auditory, visual, tactile, and kinesthetic learning styles as their major styles and individual and group learning styles as their minor styles. Moghadam, Razavi and Jayervand (2013) also used Reid s (1987) PLSPQ to assess the students preferred learning styles. The main results of this study showed that the kinesthetic learning style was the mostly preferred learning style and individual learning style was the less favoured style. In another study, Zokaee, Zaferanieh, and Naseri (2012) used Reid s (1987) PLSPQ to assess Learning Styles of 54 Iranian male and female EFL learners majoring in English literature at Tarbiat Moallem University, ranging in age from 20 to 22. The results of the study showed that the respondents major styles were visual style that was the most frequent style, and Kinesthetic and auditory styles ranked the second and third preferred styles respectively; while, group style was the least favoured learning style among the all. Wintergerst et al. (2003) argue that the inconsistence of the learning styles patterns, preferences and correlation among them from one nation or a group of learners to another may be due to the cultural differences existing between different groups of learners. For example Anderson (1995; as cited in Wintergerst et al., 2003) argues that certain groups at secondary and post-secondary levels culturally lend themselves more readily to cooperative learning than to competitive learning. Therefore, Wintergerst et al. (2003) assert that culture, ethnicity, class, and gender play important roles in shaping the learning preferences and learning styles of students. A. Purpose of the Study and Research Questions Although there are a good number of studies conducted to measure Iranian EFL learners learning styles (for a review refer to Vaseghi, Ramezani, & Gholami, 2012), to the authors knowledge, there is no study published in English in which Iranian L2 learners Learning styles are measured through Wintegerst, Decapua and Verna s (2002) LSI questionnaire. In a recent study, Huseynpur, Moghaddam, and Rezaie (2015) used LSI in their research to probe the relationship between students learning styles and their socioeconomic status. Although, they reported that there was no meaningful relationship between secondary school students socioeconomic status and their group, individual, and project activities, there was no information focusing on the status of and the relationship amongst students language learning styles. On the other hand, they had omitted some of the 23

4 items of the scales pertaining to the learning styles and reduced the number of each scale to only four items which had led to lower reliability of the scales. To fill in the gap, the current study aims to probe secondary school students language learning styles (including group activities, individual activities, and project work) and the relationship among these scales. The following are the research questions formulated based on the research purposes. 1. What is the pattern of learning styles among secondary school students? 2. Is there any relationship among different scales of the learning styles? A. Participants II. METHODOLOGY Two private secondary schools were randomly chosen from District 1 in Tehran, the capital city of Iran. Participants of the study were all male students studying the first grade of secondary school- the general grade studied before the secondary school students select their major of study (whether Mathematics, Sciences, Humanities, or Art) based on their final scores. Totally 57 students participated in this research; due to incompleteness, three students questionnaires were excluded from the analysis leading to only 54 valid cases. B. Instrument Wintergerst et al. s (2002) LSI was opted to be used as the measure to probe the learners language learning styles. The learning style variables included in LSI consisted of 23 likert scale items ranging from 1 (never) to 4 (always). The items were categorized as Group Activity (GAO), Individual Activity (IAO), and Project (PO). The questionnaire which was originally in English was translated into Farsi (the official language of the participants) by the first author and two of the colleagues, and ultimately they agreed upon the best translation for each item after discussing the three versions of the translations. The agreed-upon Farsi version of the questionnaire was conducted in a pilot study among a sample similar to the population. There were some minor ambiguity problems raised in the pilot test which were eliminated in the final version for the research. Using Cronbach s Alpha through SPSS 22, the reliability of the scales were calculated and the results indicated that the reliability of the IAO, GAO, and PO were.74,.75, and.89 respectively which all enjoyed acceptable amount which should, according to Dörnyei (2007), be above 0.7 in social sciences. Some more items were also added to the questionnaire in order to collect some demographic information concerning the participants. C. Procedure The first author of the current study approached the selected two schools in person and after discussing the aims and scopes of the study to the principals of the schools he was introduced to the first graders class. To seek for a better cooperation on the part of the 24

5 students, the teachers of the classes were asked to stay in the class while collecting the data. The first author explained the students that the questionnaire they were about to fill in was not a test and there was no right or wrong answer to its items and their honest response to them would actually contribute to language learning in the future. The participants handed in the attempted questionnaires in average around 20 minutes. After collecting the questionnaire sheets the first author appreciated the participants as well as the school authorities for contributing to the current research. The data were computer coded and transferred to SPSS 22 for further analysis. A. Reliability of the Instrument III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The results of the reliability coefficient calculated through the Chronbach s Alpha revealed that the translated form of the learning styles scales of the LSI enjoys acceptable reliability. Cronbach s Alpha was computed for 7 items of the Individual Activity (IAO), 5 items of the Group Activity (GAO), and 11 items of the Project (PO). The high internal consistency values of scales of the LSI observed in this study further supports the reliability of the style model developed by Wintergerst and his associates. Table 1 illustrates the results of Cronbach s Alpha reliability of the three variables. Table 1. Reliability Statistics - IAO Learning Styles Cronbach's Alpha N of Items Individual Activity Group Activity Project B. Descriptive Statistics The descriptive statistics for the data of the current study, in particular, ratios of skewness and kurtosis over their standard errors, indicates that the data of the current study enjoys relatively normal distribution among the participants. Table 2 illustrates the standard deviation, the skewness, and the kurtosis of the distributions. Individual Activity Table 2.Descriptive Statistics N Mean Std. Deviation Skewness Kurtosis Statistic Statistic Statistic Statistic Std. Error Statistic Std. Error Group Activity Project Valid N (listwise) 54 25

6 The mean of the IAO (M=2.60), GAO (M=2.77), and PO (M=2.86) suggest that all the three learning styles are common among the participants. The mean of PO is the highest and the mean of IAO is the lowest among the participants. This is in line with Wintergerst et al. s (2003) findings in that the Russian EFL learners preferred PO over GAO and GAO over IAO. C. Repeated Measure ANOVA for the Means Differences As indicated in the descriptive statistics table the participants overall mean of IAO, GAO, and PO was different from each other. However, drawing on the mean differences doesn t merely support that these differences are significant and meaningful. Therefore, the repeated measure ANOVA was run to probe any probability of significant difference among the independent variables. Mauchly s test (x 2 (5) =21.36, p<.01) revealed that the condition of sphericity had not been met since the probability value was significant at p<.001 which suggests that there were significant differences between the variance of differences (see table 3). Measure: MEASURE_1 Table 3. Mauchly's Test of Sphericity a Epsilon b Within Subjects Effect Mauchly's W Approx. Chi- Square df Sig. Greenhouse- Geisser Huynh-Feldt Lowerbound LearningStyles Tests the null hypothesis that the error covariance matrix of the orthonormalized transformed dependent variables is proportional to an identity matrix. a. Design: Intercept Within Subjects Design: Learning Styles b. May be used to adjust the degrees of freedom for the averaged tests of significance. Corrected tests are displayed in the Tests of Within-Subjects Effects table. Due to the violation of the sphericity of the data and the value of epsilon which was less than.75 (ε=.73), degrees of freedom were corrected using the Greenhouse-Geisser estimates of sphericity. The results indicated that there was no significant difference between the means of the three learning styles explored in the current study, namely Individual Activity, Group Activity, and Project F(1.45, 66.77)=1.64, p=.21. These results suggested that no learning style of the current study was significantly preferred to the others (see table 4). 26

7 Source Table 4. Tests of Within-Subjects Effects Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Learning Styles Sphericity Assumed Greenhouse-Geisser Huynh-Feldt Lower-bound Error (Learning Styles) Sphericity Assumed Greenhouse-Geisser Huynh-Feldt Lower-bound D. The Relationship among Learning Style Scales To assess the relationship among the IAO, GAO, and PO, a Pearson s productmoment correlation was run. The results of Pearson s correlation indicated that there was a significant and an almost strong positive correlation between group activity orientation and project orientation with an almost strong effect size, r =.48, N=54, p<.01. There was also a significant and strong negative correlation between group activity orientation and individual activity orientation with a strong effect size, r=.50, N=54, p<.01. However, there wasn t found any significant relationship between project orientation and individual activity orientation (p=.77). Table 5 indicates the correlation coefficients between the variables and the significance values. Individual Activity Group Activity Table 5. Correlations Individual Activity Group Activity Project Pearson Correlation ** Sig. (2-tailed) N Pearson Correlation ** ** Sig. (2-tailed) N Project Pearson Correlation ** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) N **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). The observed reverse relationship between GAO and IAO in this study is in line with the findings of Palabıyık (2014) who revealed a reverse strong relationship between 27

8 individual and group learning styles, r(98) = -.60 at p<.01. The nearly strong positive relationship between GAO and PO in the current study (r=.48, N=54, p<.01) is also in line with Wintergerst et al. s (2003) findings in which they reported significantly moderate correlations between GAO and PO in Russian EFL students (r=.46 at p<.01) and Asian ESL students (r=.40 at p<.01). In the same line with Wintergerst et al. s (2003) findings which indicated no correlation between IAO and PO among Russian EFL, Russian ESL, and Asian ESL learners, the current study failed to find any significant correlation between IAO and PO among Iranian EFL learners either. A. Summary and Conclusion IV. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATION The current study was designed to investigate the Iranian secondary school pupils preferred learning styles and the relationship among them. The participants were 54 male students who were at the first grade in two private senior secondary schools selected randomly in Tehran. The data to measure participants individual activity, group activity, and project orientation was elicited through Wintergerst, DeCapua and Verna s (2002) Learning Style Indicator (LSI) questionnaire. Because the original version of the questionnaire was written in English and the participants first language or official language in the current study was Farsi, the first author and two of his colleagues translated the questionnaire into Farsi separately and the final version was modified and agreed upon after comparing the three translated versions. The participants responses were coded from 1 (never) to 4 (always) and introduced to SPSS 22. Data analysis was run through Chronbach s Alpha to calculate the reliability of the scales. The significance of the differences among the means of the learning styles were probed through repeated measure ANOVA, and the correlations among the learning styles were investigate through Pearson s product-moment correlation. The Chronbach s Alpha reliability test revealed that all the three styles enjoyed acceptable internal consistency with PO and IAO possessing the highest and the lowest Alpha value respectively. The reliability of IAO with 7 items was α=.74, the reliability of GAO with 5 items was α=.75, and the reliability of PO with 11 items was α=.89. According to the statistical data, the average mean of Project was the highest (M=2.86), and the average mean of Individual Activity was the lowest (M=2.60) among the participants of the current study. Inferably, the average mean of Group Activity (M=2.77) stood somewhere between the means of PO and IAO. Applying the repeated measure ANOVA to probe the significance of the mean differences of the participants learning styles, the results revealed that none of the probed learning styles (IAO, GAO, and PO) was significantly more preferred than the others among Iranian male secondary school pupils, F (1.45, 66.77) =1.64, p=.21, suggesting that there is no common pattern of learning styles preference among the population of the study. In other words students differ in the hierarchy of their preferences of the three learning styles. 28

9 The Pearson s product-moment correlation was also run to investigate the relationship among the learning styles. It was observed that there was a significant and strong reverse relationship between IAO and GAO with a strong effect size (r=.50, N=54, p<.01). There was also a significant and an almost strong positive correlation between GAO and PO with an almost strong effect size, (r =.48, N=54, p<.01). Unlike, there was no significant relationship found between IAO and PO (p=.76).the observed correlations suggest that the students who prefer GAO strongly tend to prefer PO and disfavour IAO. On the other hand students who prefer IAO strongly tend to disfavour GAO while there is no reason to claim they favour or disfavour PO. B. Pedagogic Implications The findings of the current study will shed more light on the work of second/foreign language teachers, task and syllabus designers, and curriculum developers. Language teachers knowing that IAO, GAO, and PO are almost equally common among their students may wish to adjust their teaching strategies in order to match with the varying learning style preferences of their students. They also are recommended not to ignore any group of students which prefer one specific style over another and inferably to include various assignments and learning activities in harmony with any of the learning styles. The same recommendation may also be addressed to task and syllabus designers and language curriculum developers in that they should take into consideration the different materials, tasks, and learning activities any of which is argued to be appropriate for a particular group of L2 learners with a specific preference of learning styles. For example, due to the preference of IAO, GAO, and PO by different groups of Iranian secondary school students, Iranian EFL teachers might assign individual activity oriented students tasks which are usually done in isolation rather than in collaboration. The same recommendation is true about dealing with group activity oriented and project oriented students who should be assigned to do collaborative and project tasks respectively. C. Limitations and Delimitations The findings of the current study are generalizable to the male students at the first grade of senior secondary schools in Tehran, the capital city of Iran. The generalization could be made to all Iranian EFL learners If the sample included female students, students from other cities of Iran, those who study in the upper grades of the secondary school, the EFL learners who learn English as a voluntarily course at private language institutions rather than as a compulsory course in secondary schools, and the student from different age groups. In this study only three learning styles namely IAO, GAO, and PO were investigated, while there are many other dimensions and variables pertaining to learners learning styles (for learning style dimensions and factors refer to Salimi & Huseynpur, 2015) which are worthwhile to be included in the future researches. The role and the relationship of the learners background variables such as age, race, ethnicity, first language, proficiency level, and students length of language learning have not been addressed in this study. 29

10 REFERENCES Coffield, F., Moseley, D., Hall, E., & Ecclestone, K. (2004). Learning styles and pedagogy in post-16 learning: A systematic and critical review. Retrieved from Dörnyei, Z. (2007). Research methods in applied linguistics: Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methodologies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Felder, R. M., & Henriques, E. R. (1995). Learning and teaching styles in foreign and second language teaching. Foreign Language Annals, 28(1), Huseynpur, B., Moghaddam, M. Y., & Rezaie, G. (2015).The relationship of EFL learners socio-economic status with their learning styles.international Journal of Educational Investigations, 2(1), Keefe, J. W. (1979). Learning style: An overview. In J. W. Keefe (Ed.) Student learning styles: Diagnosing and prescribing programs (pp.1-17). Reston, VA: National Association of Secondary School Principals. Palabıyık, P. Y. (2014). Perceptual learning style preferences among Turkish junior high school students. Journal of Education and Future, 6, Reid, J., M. (1987).The learning style preferences of ESL students. TESOL Quarterly, 21(1), Reid, J.M. (ed.) Learning styles in the ESL/EFL classroom. Boston: Heinle and Heinle. Riazi, A., & Mansoorian, M. A. (2008).Learning style preferences among Iranian male and female EFL students. The Iranian EFL Journal Quarterly, 2, Salimi, A., & Huseynpur, B. (2015). Revisiting the conceptual ambiguity of learning styles. International Journal of Educational Investigations, 2(8), Retrieved from Vaseghi, R., Ramezani, A. E., & Gholami, R. (2012). Language learning style preferences: A theoretical and empirical study. Advances in Asian Social Science, 2(2), Wintergerst, A. C., DeCapua, A., & Itzen, R. C. (2001). The construct validity of one learning styles instrument. System, 29, Wintergerst, A., DeCapua, A., & Verna, M., (2002). An analysis of one learning styles instrument for language students. TESL Canada Journal/Revue TESL du Canada, 20, Moghadam, Y. S., Razavi, A, & Jayervand, H. (2013). The Iranian ESL learners preferred conceptual learning style and the most used intelligence. International Journal of Psychology and Behavioral Research, 2(2), Zakaee,S., Zaferanieh, E., & Naseri, M. (2012). On the impacts of perceptual learning style and gender on Iranian undergraduate EFL learners choice of vocabulary learning strategies. English Language Teaching, 5, doi: /elt.v5n9p138 30