Academic Exchange Quarterly Fall 2012 ISSN 1096-1453 Volume 16, Issue 3
To cite, use print source rather than this on-line version
which may not reflect print copy
format requirements or text lay-out and pagination.
|
This article should not be
reprinted for inclusion in any publication for sale without author's explicit
permission. Anyone may view, reproduce or store copy of this article for
personal, non-commercial use as allowed by the "Fair Use"
limitations (sections 107 and 108) of the U.S. Copyright law. For any other
use and for reprints, contact article's author(s) who may impose usage fee..
See also electronic version copyright
clearance CURRENT VERSION COPYRIGHT © MMXII
AUTHOR & ACADEMIC EXCHANGE QUARTERLY |
Learning
Styles in a College Japanese Class
Masako Hamada, Villanova University
Hamada, Ed.D., is Associate Professor of Japanese Studies Program,
Institute for Global Interdisciplinary Studies
Abstract
Different
students have different styles of learning foreign languages. This paper
reports on a study to determine the learning styles of individual students in a
college-level Japanese class over one year and also to see if there were any
changes in their learning styles. The results showed that the survey itself
gave the students a greater awareness and understanding of their own learning
style(s). It led them to consider how their styles affected them and (in some
cases) to try new learning styles in order to learn Japanese more efficiently
and more effectively.
Introduction
Each
of us learns in different ways and we often choose to use what is called our “preferred
learning style” (Pritchard, 2005). Different students also have different
styles of learning foreign languages. Dornyei (2005) defines learning styles as “a profile of the
individual’s approach to learning, a blueprint of the habitual or preferred way
the individual perceives interacts with and responds to the learning
environment” (p.122). Bailey
et al (2000) mention that Cornett (1983) believes that “each individual is born with certain tendencies toward particular learning
styles that are subsequently influenced by culture, personal experiences,
maturation, and development” (p.116). Also Furuhata
(2002) and (Xiao,
2006) remark that cultural forces influence linguistic
factors and Furuhata (2002) notes that the Japanese
language is quite different from Indo-European languages, especially its syntactic,
lexical and orthographic characteristics.
Understanding language learners is a matter of
examining a variety of evidence, both observable and unobservable, about their
ways of learning language (Wesely, 2012, p. S98). Some people learn foreign and second languages
without much difficulty, while others have problems due to various factors,
such as phonological processing difficulties in foreign language learning
(Downey, Snyder & Hill, 2000) and deficits in first language learning
(Sparks & Ganschow, 1993). Castro and Peck (2005) state that
there are also some other elements (besides language learning deficits) that
prevent students’ success in foreign language learning, including 1) linguistic
deficits; 2) anxiety; 3) social and personal issues, and also 4) students’
learning styles.
Teaching
a class which is composed of a diverse of group of people as a group without
ignoring the students’ individual learning styles is a key issue since people
learn differently according to their preferred learning styles (Smith &
Kolb, 1986; Pritchard, 2005). Dornyei (2005) notes
that four factors in individual differences have received special attention in
past second language research: the students’ 1) motivation; 2) language
aptitude; 3) learning styles; and 4) learning strategies.
Classroom assessment
helps teachers obtain useful information on how well their students are
learning and this information helps teachers to refocus their teaching to help
students make their learning more efficient and effective (Angelo & Cross,
1993). Nilson (2010) stresses the importance of the selection
of appropriate teaching methods, which is critical to the students’ learning,
and that assessment of students’ learning styles is crucial for designing the
curriculum of the course. Nilson also says that “your
course design is your skeleton, your methods are the muscles on the bones”
(p.103).
As
Bailey et al (2000) pointed out, “research into the
role of learning styles in foreign language achievement could serve to help a
significant number of students improve their foreign language study habits,
their learning flexibility, and ultimately their performance” (p.117).
This
paper reports on a study of the learning styles of individual students in a
college-level Japanese class over one year to ascertain their preferred
learning styles and also to see if there were any changes in their learning
styles over the course of the year. The study applied Faggella
and Horowitz’s “Seven Styles of Learning” (1990) to determine individual
student’s learning styles and also to see if they continued to use the same
learning styles or if there were any changes in their learning styles over the
course of the two semesters of the study period.
The
results showed that the survey itself gave the students a greater awareness and
understanding of their own learning style(s). It led them to consider how their
styles affected them in the process of learning the foreign language and (in
some cases) to try new learning styles to see if doing so helped them learn the
foreign language even more efficiently and effectively.
Learning
and Teaching Styles
Learning
styles are general approaches used by learners in order to learn a new subject
or to cope with a new problem (Oxford, Ehrman & Lavine, 1991).
There are certainly many ways of learning, but there are also some general learning styles, including:
by visualizing, hearing, reading, memorizing, categorizing, acting, playing
music, reflecting, reasoning logically and intuitively, reading, etc.
Learning styles
have been extensively discussed in the educational field, and Reid (1998) notes that “successful students often have
multi-style preferences and adapt their learning styles with experimentation
and practice (p. xi).”
Teachers have
their own tendencies to teach foreign languages using the approaches and
methods they feel most comfortable with. (Smith & Kolb, 1986) Problems
arise, however, when there is a conflict between the teacher’s teaching style
and students’ learning styles. As Kara (2009) notes:
Teachers’ classroom behaviors impact on
many different areas of the process such as preparation, classroom
presentation, activities and approaches (Masse & Popovich,
2006)…. Reid (1987) stated that mismatches between learning and teaching styles
often occurred and this mismatch resulted in bad effects on students’ learning
and attitudes to English. Wallace and Oxford (1992) stated that students and
teachers experienced style conflicts 82% of the time (p. 80).
Ehrman (1996) in Bailey et al. (2000) said
that if “mismatches exist between learners’ styles and
curriculum or teaching style, problems for learners will result” (p. 117).
Sprenger (2003) points out that teachers should
assess the learning styles of their students and adapt their classroom methods
and approaches to best suit each student’s learning style. Reid (1998) suggests
“rais[ing] learning styles
awareness in both teachers and students,” recommending that teachers develop
teaching techniques that address the broad needs of most learners and teach
students to experiment with extending their preferred styles.
It
is also important for teachers to help students gain cognitive awareness of
their own learning styles because students are more likely to work harder and
benefit much more from their classes when there is a match between their
teacher’s teaching style and their own learning styles. (Peacock, 2001) Suinn (2006) emphasizes the importance of matching teaching
methods to a student’s learning style: using the appropriate teaching style can
enhance the student’s ability to grasp the information and to remember the
material.
However,
as Draper (2012) notes:
Finally
learning styles are just one part of a more fundamental issue. Should teachers
adapt to learners, or learners to teachers?
The answer is “both”; and the concept to think of is that of learning
communities. (p. 40)
One
issue to keep in mind is that most Japanese instructors in the U.S. are native
Japanese, and it is likely that their teaching styles reflect their earlier
Japanese education at school (Furuhata 2002), which
is somehow different from how American college students learned in school. Specifically,
the native Japanese teachers were educated in schools that featured teacher-centered teaching, book-centered
learning, the grammar-translation method of learning foreign languages, and an
emphasis on rote memory.
Research Questions and Method
Research Questions
The questions that this
research attempted to answer were:
1. What learning styles
were favored by the individual students in the class?
2. Would their learning
style stay the same or would they make any changes or adjustments in their
learning styles over one academic year?
3. Did the results of the
survey give the students any awareness of their own learning styles?
Participants
Participants in
this study were 15 undergraduate students in an introductory Japanese class in
a first-year college-level Japanese language class in the 2010-2011 academic
year at a large private university on the East Coast of the United States. They
all took the class for two semesters. Their mean age was 19. Most of the
students had taken other foreign languages, such as Spanish, French, German or
Latin, in high schools, but this was the first time for the students to study
Japanese at the college level, so they might have had some concerns and anxiety
about studying an unfamiliar foreign language (Hamada, 2008).
Based on their
responses to a question on the first survey they filled out, their motivations
for taking the course were as follows: 1) an interest in Japanese culture,
especially, anime, manga, video games, etc., 2) having
friends in Japan, 3) studying abroad, 4) teaching English in Japan, 5) working in
international corporations, etc.; 6) an academic interest in fulfilling the
college’s foreign language requirement; or 7) a combination of the above.
Instruments
In order to
understand the students’ learning styles, this study applied Faggella and Horowitz’s (1990) “Seven Styles of Learning”:
(1) Linguistic learner, (2) Logical/Mathematical learner, (3) Spatial learner,
(4) Musical learner, (5) Bodily/Kinesthetic learner, (6) Interpersonal learner,
and (7) Intrapersonal learner.
Method: Survey to Identify Learning Styles
Prior to the beginning of
the class for the first semester, the teacher had the students fill out a
survey about their learning styles. The teacher also assessed her own preferred
learning style. This exercise gave both students and the teacher the
opportunity to better understand their own learning styles.
The students were asked
to fill out the survey two more times during the fall semester and three times
during the spring semester.
Results of
the Surveys
Here are the learning styles the students chose as their own learning
styles.
First
Research Question
What learning styles were
favored by the individual students in the class?
The results show that the students in
the class chose a variety of learning styles, with every one of the seven
learning styles chosen by at least one student.
Note: The
teacher’s learning style in both fall and spring semesters was Logical and
Mathematical Learner “The Questioner” (#2)
The results showed that
they typically use more than one learning style, and successful students often
have multi-style preferences (Reid, 1998).
The results
show that some students are “Linguistic Learners,” who are good at
memorization, saying, hearing and seeing words. Some students are “Logical/Mathematical
Learners,” who are good at reasoning, categorizing the materials. Some students
are “Spatial Learner,” who are good at visualizing, working with picture. Some
students are “ Musical Learners,” who are good at learning through rhythm and
music. Some students are “Bodily/Kinesthetic Learners,” who are good at
learning through moving, interacting with classmates. Some students are “Interpersonal
Learners,” who are good at sharing and cooperating with classmates. Some
students are “Intrapersonal Learners,” who are good at learning through their
own self-paced instruction.
Second Research Question
Would their learning
style stay the same or would they make any changes or adjustments in their
learning styles over one academic year?
Most of them continued
using the same learning style they had developed, which they believed was
effective for their learning. However, five students, after
recognized their own learning styles in the fall semester, tried in the spring
to apply another style to improve and enhance their learning (for example,
combining memorization with music, memorization with visualization, practicing with
group members and classmates and learning from each other’s mistakes, and
categorizing with visualization in the process of learning.) They
commented after trying another learning style that it helped them improve their
learning.
The
students also commented that the act of taking the survey was a source of good
conversation with their teacher and classmates, which created a more productive
classroom environment. Regardless of their
learning styles, most of the students pointed out that learning and working
together with their classmates were enjoyable and helped their learning process
in class.
Third Research Question
Did the results of the survey give the students any awareness
of their own learning
styles?
The survey gave
the students some cognitive awareness of their learning styles. As shown in
tables 2 and 3, most of them continued to use the same learning styles they
have developed, which they believed were effective for their learning, but five
students tried new learning styles. However, as their comments show, all of
them gained an awareness of their own learning style. In particular, several
mentioned that studying together with other students in groups was helpful.
Discussion
The results of the study
show that the students used all of the seven learning styles, though, of
course, some learning styles were more common than others.
By filling in the questionnaire in the fall semester, the students came
to recognize their own learning styles. However, in the spring some of them
tried to apply another style to improve and enhance their learning. Some
commented after trying another learning style that it helped them improve their
learning.
Here
are some comments from the teacher who taught the course:
The survey helped me acknowledge again
that there are various learning styles in class.
It is necessary to teach the same
material creatively through different approaches. For example, it seems that
the students enjoy learning and feel comfortable such as grammar practice
through music, songs and games.
Some students prefer to visualize the
phrases written on the board hearing them simultaneously. The students tried to
write the phrases and sentences in their notes to stimulate their memory.
For oral practice through pair work,
changing their partners occasionally is important, so students can keep getting
stimulation from new partners.
So, by participating in
this survey, both teacher
and students gained a greater awareness of their teaching and learning styles.
For her part, the teacher became aware of a mismatch between her own teaching
styles and the learning styles of her students and she realized that the
mismatch affected the quality of the students’ learning and had an impact on
their attitudes toward the class and the subject (Felder & Henriques, 1995).
In addition, this survey
became a conversation piece among students, encouraging them to share their
learning styles and to try to apply other learning styles, which created a
positive and motivating learning environment in class. They shared their styles
with their classmates and suggested to each other that they try different
styles to see if they would work for them, and there were indeed changes in
some students’ learning styles over the academic year. Perhaps the
regularly-administered surveys encouraged them to improve their learning styles
by trying other styles. It seems that responding to the surveys gave students
opportunities to reflect on their own strengths and weaknesses and on ways to
make improvements in their learning through understanding their own learning
styles and trying new ones.
This suggests
that we teachers need to train
ourselves to include “a wide variety of teaching styles as part of our
pedagogical repertoire to make sure we address the learning styles of the
majority of students” (Castro & Peck, 2005, p. 407), to adjust our teaching
if it does not match our students’ learning styles, and to try to help reduce
students’ learning-style
conflicts so they will not lose their desire to learn the foreign language
(Ueno, 2005). Of course, it may be difficult for some teachers to change their
teaching styles based on their students’ learning styles (Felder & Henriques, 1995), but they should do their best proactively
to try to accommodate students’ learning styles as well as they can through
self-practicing or role-playing with their colleagues.
Conclusion
This
paper reported on the results of a study of the learning styles of individual
students in a college-level Japanese class over one year to ascertain their
preferred learning styles and also to see if there were any changes in their
learning styles over the course of the year.
The
result showed that the students in the class chose a variety of learning
styles, with every one of the seven learning styles chosen by at least one
student. By asking them to review
their learning styles, the survey gave the students some cognitive awareness of
what methods and strategies they use to learn a foreign language.
This study
suggests that it would be worthwhile for teachers to not only discuss the issue
of learning styles with their students and to examine their own learning styles
but also to try to make an effort to discover the preferred learning styles of
the students and then try to better match their own teaching style to their
students’ preferred learning styles, and also design lessons, teaching methods,
classroom procedures and classroom activities to match their students’ learning
styles.
Teachers can
employ instruments such as the “seven styles of learning” identified by Faggella and Horowitz’s (1990) that were used in this
research to identify their students’ learning styles and use various means of
instruction to address individual learning differences.
Teachers should
also remind the students that the classroom is a safe environment to try
another learning style to see if it helps them. We have a saying in our
classes: “Enjoy mistakes, nobody is perfect. We learn from mistakes.”
It may also be “instructive”
for teachers to share their own experiences learning foreign languages.
By doing all of
the above, we can assist our students in becoming more effective language
learners in a more comfortable learning environment.
It
is hoped that this study will help Japanese teachers better understand their students’
learning styles and give them some ideas on how to adjust and adapt their
teaching styles to their students’ learning styles in order to teach any level
of a language more practically and effectively.
Most of the students in the survey continued to study
Japanese language in the intermediate class and the advanced class, and four of
them studied abroad in Japan. According to the students who took this survey,
the survey stimulated their awareness of their own learning styles and the
effectiveness of their learning and stimulated their motivation to learn
further as well as being a good conversation topic with their classmates.
One limitation of this study was that the sample number was small, and a
large number of respondents would be needed for further research which would
enable us to more fully understand students’ learning styles and teachers’
teaching styles and how the two mutually influence each other in a classroom
environment.
References
Angelo, T. A.,
& Cross, P. K. (1993). Classroom
assessment techniques:
A handbook for college teachers. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,
Inc.
Baily, P., Onwuegbuzie, A. J., & Daley, C. E. (2000). Using
learning styles to predict foreign language achievement at the college level. System 28,
115-133.
Castro, O.,
& Peck, V. (2005). Learning styles and foreign language learning difficulties.
Foreign Language Annals, 38(3),
401-409.
Dornyei, Z. (2005). The psychology of the
language learner: Individual differences in second language acquisition. NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Downey, D. M.,
Snyder, L. E., & Hill, B. (2000). College students with dyslexia: Persistent
linguistic deficits and foreign language learning. Dyslexia, 6,
101-111.
Draper, S. W. (2012). Learning styles (note), Retrieved from http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/lstyles.html
Faggella, K., &
Horowitz J. (1990). Different child, different style. Instructor 100(2), 49-54.
Felder, M. R., & Henriques,
E. R. (1995). Learning and Teaching styles in Foreign and Second Language
Education. Foreign Language Annals, 28(1),
21-31.
Furuhata, H. (2002).
Learning Japanese in America: A survey of preferred teaching methods. Language, culture, and curriculum,
15(2), 134-142.
Hamada,
M. (2008). Foreign language anxiety in a Japanese language college classroom:
An exploratory study. BATJ Journal, 9, 1-7.
Kara,
S. (2009). Learning styles and teaching styles: A case study in foreign
language classroom. Retrieved from http://openaccesslibrary.org/images/BOS134_Selma_Kara.pdf
Nilson, L. B. (2010). Teaching at its best. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc.
Oxford,
R. L., Ehrman, M. E., & Lavine,
R. Z. (1991). Style wars: teacher-student style conflicts in the language
classroom. In S. S. Magnan (Ed.), Challenges in the 1990’s for College Foreign
Language Programs (pp.
1-25). Boston: Heinle & Heinle
/ Thomson International.
Peacock,
M. (2001). Match or mismatch? Learning styles and teaching styles in EFL. International Journals of Applied
Linguistics, 11(1), 1-20.
Pritchard,
A. (2005). Ways of learning: Learning
theories and learning styles in the classroom. Great Britain: David Fulton
Publishers.
Reid,
J. M. (1998). Understanding learning
styles in the second language classroom. New York: Prentice Hall Regents.
Smith,
D., & Kolb, D. A. (1986), User’s
guide for the learning style inventory. Boston: McBer
and Co.
Sparks,
R. L., & Ganschow, L. (1993). Searching for the cognitive locus of foreign language learning
difficulties: Linking first and second language learning. Modern Language Journal, 77,
289-302.
Sprenger, M. (2003).
Differentiation through learning styles and memory. Thousand Oaks, Calif. Corwin
Press.
Suinn, R. M. (2006).
Teaching culturally diverse students. In McKeachie’s teaching tips: strategies, research, and theory for college and
university teachers. (pp. 151-171). California: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Ueno,
J. (2005). Grammar Instruction and Learning Style. Japanese Language
and Literature, 39(1), 1-25.
Wesely, P. M. (2012).
Learner attitudes, perceptions, and belief in language learning. Foreign Language Annals,
45, S1, S98-S117.
Xiao,
L. (2006). Bridging the gap between teaching styles and learning styles:
A cross-cultural perspective. TESL-EJ,
19(3), 1-5.