The Relationship between Learning Styles and Vocabulary Learning and Retention

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Spectrum: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Research

Vol. 4 Issue 1, January 2015, ISSN 2278-0637, pp. pp. 249-263 (Special Issue on Basic and Applied Sciences)

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The Relationship between Learning Styles and Vocabulary Learning and

Retention

*Hekmat Allah Padidar, ** Ghasem Tayebi, ***Alireza Shakarami

*English Department, Faculty of Humanities, Islamic Azad University of Yasuj, Iran

**Corresponding Author, English Department, Islamic Azad University of Kazeroon, Kazeroon, Iran

*** English Department, Islamic Azad University of Kazeroon, Kazeroon, Iran

Abstract

This study aims at exploring the relationship between students’ different learning styles and their

degree of vocabulary retention. The participants of this research were a population of 110 High

School Iranian EFL learners in Dehdasht divided into three groups namely visual, auditory, and

kinesthetic learners. In this study Oxford Placement Test (2007) and Davis’s Questionnaire

(1997) were used to determine language proficiency and learning styles of the participants

respectively. It has been tried to indicate which group of learners’ learning styles namely visual,

auditory and kinesthetic learns and retains vocabularies more optimally in the traditional

method of teaching vocabulary. The major findings of this study are as follows; at the outset of

this study participants showed nearly similar performance on Oxford Placement Test as pretest,

in immediate post-test respectively visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners exhibited superior

presentation, finally in delayed post-test again visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners

displayed better performance respectively. Accordingly, based on the findings of this study, it

can be concluded that there is strong relationship between learning styles and vocabulary

learning and retention especially in visual learners. Keywords: Learning Styles, Vocabulary Learning, Visual Learners, Auditory Learners,

Kinesthetic Learners

Introduction

It is truly believed that vocabulary is the building block of every language and it is of great

importance to and a central part of language learning. Some scholars have even stressed that, no

matter how skilled students are at grammar, communication will cease without the words to

convey meaning (e.g., McCarthy, 1990). Milton (2009) comments that vocabulary is not an

elective or insignificant component in the language acquisition process insomuch as ―words are

the building blocks of language and without them there is no language‖ (p. 3).

Without an extensive vocabulary and strategies for acquiring new vocabulary, learners often

achieve less than their potential and may be discouraged from making use of language learning

opportunities around them such as listening to the radio, listening to native speakers, using the

language in different contexts, reading or watching television. Zhang (2009) concerning English,

states that the effective learning of new lexical items seems to be one of the major aims for

learners of English.

Practitioners and investigators in the spheres of second-language teaching mainly believe that

individual learner differences answer the question of why the prosperity of a second-language

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learners are various (Ellis, 1985). From the research to date, it is crystal clear that all language

learners use language learning strategies in some ways; however, the frequency and variety of

use vary between different learners and depend on a number of variables (Chamot & Kupper,

1989). Generally, there is consensus among scholars that benefiting from language learning

strategies can lead into language proficiency positively.

Investigations including language learners often demonstrated that the most successful learners

prefer to benefit from learning styles alongside strategies that are more appropriate to the task,

information, needs, self-objective, motivation and stage of learning (Oxford, 1990). It seems that

good language learner can handle difficult situation, while unsuccessful one is unable to cope

with these situations successfully (Rubin &Thompson, 1994). Successful language learners, in

accordance to them, can find the right way by benefiting from learning through the management

of their language information and benefiting from their own chances for rehearsing language.

Additionally, they benefit from not only linguistic knowledge but those available contextual cues

to aid them for a better comprehension in the course of learning a new language (Jhaish, 2010).

As Jhaish (2010) expounds, researchers in the field have done their best in order to find out

teaching methods, suitable techniques, and appropriate instructional materials that can enhance

better language learning. Nevertheless, despite all the aforementioned endeavors, there has been

an increasing trouble over why students’ progress was not equal to previous prediction. Because

the differences among learners are not stable in various traits such as their gender, age, social

status, motivation, attitude, aptitude, culture, and so on. What lead into the success of one may

not lead into success of others. Learning styles is also another variable but Oxford (1995) asserts

that ―little research has been dedicated to the relationship between learning strategy use, learning

style and academic achievement‖ (p. 241).

Regarding the aforementioned issues and with respect to the need to consider the learning style

of the students in language learning in general and vocabulary learning in particular, the

researcher conducted the ongoing study. The purpose of this study was to investigate the

individual learning style preferences of learners, and to reveal whether there is a relationship

between language learning styles and vocabulary learning and long term retention of learned

vocabularies. The major research questions were then as follow:

1. Is there any correlation between students’ learning styles, namely visual, auditory and

kinesthetic, and their degree of vocabulary retention?

From this major question emerges another minor question, and it is stated as follows:

2. If yes, which one of the three groups of learners, namely visual, auditory and kinesthetic

learners, has a better performance in retaining new words?

Review Of Literature Research on learning styles focuses on the way students tends to learn new material.

Practitioners and investigators in the realm of second-language teaching mainly believe that the

differences among individuals explain the scope of success within second-language students

(Ellis, 1985). The most prominent individual differences involving, but by no means abound to,

the level of inhibition (Guiora, Beit-Hallami, Brannon, Dull, & Scovel, 1972), risk-taking

(Beebe, 1983), degree of anxiety (Mac Intyre& Gardner, 1991), and enthusiasm (Oxford

&Nyikos, 1989).

1. Definitions and classifications of learning styles

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The ways through which an individual perceives, retains, and retrieves new material are

generally called the individual’s learning style. Learning styles have been the focus of many

argumentations in the domain of educational psychology literature (Claxton & Murrell 1987;

Schmeck 1988) and particularly in the zone of language learning by Oxford and her partners

(Oxford 1990; Oxford, 1992; Wallace and Oxford 1992; Oxford & Ehrman1993).

Reid (1995) considers three main classifications of learning styles are largely recognized and

very near to the sphere of foreign language learning: perceptual or sensory learning styles,

affective/temperament learning styles and cognitive learning styles. Reid (1995) asserts that

investigation generally considers learning styles as degree along a continuum. Indeed, learners

might have more than only one learning style and are capable of changing styles in accordance to

the presented atmosphere or task.

2. Perceptual learning styles

One of the particular interests to the investigator for the current study is the perceptual learning

style that is connoted as a tendency for one of the above learning modalities –visual, auditory or

tactile. According to Sarasin (1998), the perceptual view helps us to consider dimensions of

some well-known learning-style theories by combining their significant traits into an approach

which is grounded inactions and/or behaviors that can be easily recognized within classroom

setting. As the name express for itself, visual style relates to a tendency for learning new material

via vision, and visual learners stick to their sight to learn new information. They classify

knowledge through their spatial interrelationships among notions and keep it in their minds

graphically (Nilson, 2003). Auditory style learners tend to learns via either listening or hearing

new information. They learn optimally by hearing themselves expressing ideas (Nilson, 2003).

Tactile learners tend to learn by touching or doing. They learn optimally through being active,

and they frequently learn by physical interaction so as to master a given concept (Sarasin, 1998).

3. Sensing and intuitive learning styles

In his theory of psychological types, Jung (1971) mentioned sensation and intuition as the two

main trends where people prefer to find out the world. Sensing includes looking, collecting data

by the senses; intuition encompasses indirect understanding through subconscious— having

accessed to memory, speculating and imagining. All people use both of these mentioned faculties

persistently, but the majority of people prefer to take advantages of one over the other. Sensor–

intuitor various function in the domain of language learning has been investigated by Moody

(1988) and Ehrman and Oxford (1990).

In this regard, Moody (1988) conducted a study where he used the MBTI to491 college language

students for freshmen and sophomore students. Around fifty-nine percent of the learners were

intuitors, more importantly more than the 40 percent considered for a sample of 18,592general

college students (Myers & McCaulley1985).

4. Visual and verbal learning styles

Some categories of learning styles are somehow unconventional in the literature (e.g., Barbe &

Swassing 1979; Dunn, Dunn, & Price 1978), where sensory styles are categorized as auditory,

visual, and kinesthetic. Because the five most common human senses are respectively seeing,

hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling, it is proposed that ―kinesthetic‖ does not aptly relevant

to the input sensory modalities. A learner’s tendency for both physical activity and movement in

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the course of learning attributed in a separate learning style classification: suggested paradigm

and Kolb’s(1984) model take place in those active/reflective aspect, and the well-known model

provided by Jung’s typology (Lawrence 1993) provides it based upon extravert-introvert

dimension.

Most people derive and perceive more new material from visual presentations than create a kind

of spoken or written prose (Dale 1969), whereas the majority of language helps are in verbal

way, including mostly lectures, writing in texts and on chalkboards, and even sometimes is the

form of audiotapes in language laboratories. Given the tendency of the majority of students for

visual input, a person might think that the last of these trends of presentation in specific to be

unpopular, an expectation created in study cited by Moody (1988). The time that community

college students were questioned to order 13 instructional modes based upon their ranking,

involving lectures, discussion, slides, field trips, and audiotapes, audiotapes ordered virtually the

last items for the most of those students who have participated in the surveyed.

5. Active and reflective learning styles

The complicated process of mind by which attained new information is considered as two

classifications through which knowledge can be interpreted: active experimentation and

reflective observation (Kolb 1984). He further maintains that active processing includes doing a

given work in the territory of the external world that is along with new information, and

reflective processing encompasses considering and changing the new information

introspectively. An active learner is a person who has a more preference to learn via active

learning rather than reflection and the vice versa process is true for reflective learners (Kolb

1984).

6. Sequential and global learning styles

Oxford (1990) suggests that this kind of learning style aspect can be better off being cleared by

studies of brain dominance. She cites studies of Leaver (1986) proposing that left-brain

(sequential) thinkers cope more facile with grammatical structure and also contrastive analysis,

whereas right-brain (global) thinkers are better off in learning language rhythms as well as

intonation. Sequential learners attract those strategies that include analyzing words and sentences

in to its component and are at home with the approach of structure that highlight grammatical

analysis; global learners tend those holistic strategies namely, guessing at words, searching for

main ideas, and may answer best to relatively unstructured approaches such as community

language learning which is not much attached to sequential learners.

7. Inductive and deductive learning styles

A great deal range of classroom teaching in each domain is firstly or particularly deductive, very

likely since deduction is a good and proper way for organizing and offering new material that is

prior understood material. Nevertheless, there are a lot of evidences that demonstrating massive

inductive features and factors in teaching new information enhance learning influentially.

Inductive reasoning is regarded as a crucial factor in academic achievement (Ropo 1987). Recent

cognitive study supports the significance of background knowledge in learning new information

(Glaser 1984); providing new information by establishing a rapport between previously known

materials is totally inductive. The advantages ascribed to inductive instructional trends (e.g.,

inquiry learning or discovery one) involve enhanced academic attainment and boosted reasoning

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skills abstractly (Taba, 1966), remembering of information for a more period of time, and

reconsider ability for the application of principles (Lahti 1986).

Methodology

1. Participants

The participants of this research were a population of 110 Iranian high school EFL learners in

Dehdasht, Iran. They were almost at the same educational background (pre-intermediate level),

and at the same age group 15 to 18. They were all male and native speakers of Persian.

2. Materials and Instruments

The basic material for this study was 504 Absolutely Essential Words, 6th Edition, (Bromberg,

et.al. 2012), and English for Pre-University students (Birjandi, et.al, 2011) which contains eight

units and each unit contains a long text talking about an everyday life subject (authentic text).

The texts of this book as the main pedagogical syllabus included some common lexical and

grammatical collocations and the researcher expected the EFL learners to learn and somehow

memorize them contextually and integratedly.

The first instruments used in this study included an Oxford Placement test (2007). The purpose

of administering OPT test as the pre-test was twofold. First, it was used to measure these EFL

learners’ language proficiency. As the second purpose, OPT served as the means to assess their

vocabulary knowledge at the onset of the study. The second instrument was Davis’s learning

styles inventory (1997). Besides these two introductory tests, two tests of vocabulary matching

items as immediate and delayed post-test were devised. To this end, sixty vocabularies which

were the focus of the ongoing study were randomly selected from these two books and were

given to the students. The students were asked to study the words and prepare themselves for the

tests. As the next step and based on these vocabularies, two tests were devised which were

contextualized and in the form of matching items. They were finally administered as immediate

and delayed post-tests. The purpose of these tests was to assess the degree of vocabulary learning

among participants in both short and long term duration.

3. Procedure

In order to collect the data and in the pre-test step, the participants were asked to take OPT to

uncover their level of proficiency After the administrations of language proficiency test, those

whose scores were within the range of one standard deviation above the mean and one standard

deviation below the mean were selected for the study. Through OPT which served as the pre-test,

the vocabulary knowledge of the participants were also determined. What is more, Davis’s

learning styles (1997) inventory which determines students’ different learning styles namely,

visual, auditory and kinesthetic was used to determine the learning styles of the participants. As

the next step, they were classified into three groups of twenty six students in each group. The

first twenty six of them were considered as visual group and others as auditory and kinesthetic

groups, respectively. Then, sixty vocabularies based on the students’ textbooks were given to

students and they were given one week to prepare themselves for an immediate post-test. Three

weeks later a delayed post-test was administered to the students to assess the degree of long term

vocabulary retention among different learning styles. In both the immediate and delayed post–

test the participants were asked to match the most proper vocabulary to its definition. The

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internal consistency for the immediate and delayed vocabulary tests was estimated through

Cronbach's alpha (.73 and .78 respectively). To make sure about the validity of the tests, several

subject matter experts commented on the earlier drafts; as a result, several items were changed,

modified or substituted in the final versions employed in the study.

Results

1. Descriptive statistics of the pre-test

After collecting and scoring the students' answer sheets in pre-tests step, the obtained data

was analyzed and tabulated. Table 1 presents the mean scores of all three groups in pre-test step.

Table 1 Descriptive statistics of pretest in all groups N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error

Pretest Visual 26 34.5769 2.45231 .48094

auditory 26 34.2692 2.10823 .41346

Kinesthetic 26 34.7308 2.39262 .46923

Total 78 34.5256 2.30034 .26046

As it can be noticed through table 1, there is a minor prior difference between the mean score of

these groups. According to this table, kinesthetic group had a better performance on the pretest

or OPT, compared to visual and auditory learners. The obtained results were subjected to One-

way ANOVA to ensure about homogeneity of the participants.

2. One-way ANOVA of the pretest:

As table 2 indicates, the difference of mean scores in OPT, as the pretest, between learning styles

groups namely, visual, auditory and kinesthetic group is .767, which is greater than .05. Even

though, there are prior differences between all groups of students, the differences between

groups are not significant. So it can be claimed that the three groups are homogeneous in terms

of their vocabulary knowledge. This could mean that all of the participants’ vocabulary

Table 2 One-way ANOVA of pretest in all groups ANOVA F Sig

Sum of

Squares

df Mean

Square

.266 .767

Pretest Between

Groups

2.872 2 1.436

Within Groups 404.577 75 5.394

Total 407.449 77

knowledge at the onset of the study was nearly the same, so any change in their behavior could

be attributed to the treatment used in the study. As a result, the study went on safely with these

three groups.

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3. Descriptive statistics of the immediate post-test

Table 3 Descriptive statistics of Immediate Post -test in all Groups N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error

Immediate posttest Visual 26 40.9231 7.57323 1.48523

auditory 26 36.1923 9.79395 1.92075

Kinesthetic 26 29.6154 11.29629 2.21538

Total 78 35.5769 10.62895 1.20349

According to descriptive statistics depicted in table 3, although visual learners did not have

the best performance in pretest, they had the best performance in immediate post-test.

Kinesthetic learners, on the other hand, had the worst performance in immediate post-test. This

reveals that in immediate post-test visual learners favored more in learning vocabulary. Even

though, the difference of the these groups seems to be obvious regarding the descriptive

statistics, the item at hand needs more exact clarification which will be taken care of in the

following parts.

4. One–way ANOVA of the immediate post-test

Figure 1 the Mean score of Different Learning Style Groups in Immediate

Post-test

Figure 1demonstrates that the visual students performed significantly better than those auditory

and kinesthetic learners in immediate posttest. The kinesthetic learners had the best performance

in pre-test, while here they had the worst performance in comparison to other groups.

The following table gives both between-groups and within-groups sums of squares, degrees of

freedom, F value, etc. The significant value is smaller than .05 (.000<0.005), so there is a

significant difference somewhere among the mean scores on the independent variable

(immediate post-test scores) for the three groups.

Table 4 One-way ANOVA of immediate post-test in all groups ANOVA F Sig

Sum of df Mean 8.956 .000

Squares Square

Immediate

post-test Between Groups 1677.000 2 838.500

Within Groups 7022.038 75 93.627

Total 8699.038 77

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As it can be seen, these results coincide with what you observed in Figure 3 further above, where

the mean tended to change with each group in the case of the immediate post-test. It is difficult,

however, at this point to tell if this significant difference occurred in visual, audio, or kinesthetic

group, since an ANOVA provides information on whether or not these groups differ, but it

provides no information as to the location or the source of the difference. Having received a

statistically significant difference, we can now look at the results of the post-hoc tests (Scheffe

LSD) provided in Table 5 to be able to locate the source of significance in our data.

Table 5 Post-hoc test results of immediate posttest

Multiple Comparisons Dependent Variable: immediate posttest LSD

Dependent

Variable

(I) Group (J) Group

Mean

Difference (I-J) Std. Error Sig.

95% Confidence Interval

Lower

Bound Upper Bound

Immediate

Visual AUDITORY 4.73077* 3.38989 .003 -5.3748 10.8364

Kinesthetic 11.30769* 3.38989 .000 5.2021 21.4133

AUDITORY Visual -4.73077* 3.38989 .003 -10.8364 5.3748

Kinesthetic 2.57692 3.38989 .067 2.4713 18.6825

Kinesthetic Visual -11.30769* 3.38989 .000 -21.4133 -5.2021

AUDITORY -2.57692 3.38989 .067 -18.6825 -2.4713

*. The mean difference is significant at the 0.05 level.

As Table 5 shows, visual group is statistically and significantly different from other groups. That

is, visual group outperformed audio (.003<0.05) and kinesthetic (.000<0.05) groups. According

to the statistics depicted in this table, it is not the sole visual group which defeated other groups,

but audio group has also surpassed kinesthetic group but since the alpha level exceeded the p

value (.067>0.05), the difference was not considered to be statistically significant. Thus, it is

concluded that visual method had the best impact of all methods on vocabulary learning of the

participants.

5. Descriptive statistics of the delayed post-test

As mentioned before, to test students’ long term vocabulary retention, the participants of the

three groups were asked to take the delayed post-test three weeks after the treatment. The

obtained data was then calculated and analyzed, the results of which appear in the Table 6.

Table 6 Descriptive statistics of delayed Post-test in all groups

N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error

Delayed

Posttest

Visual 26 37.5385 6.37012 1.24928

Auditory 26 28.7308 8.64203 1.69484

Kinesthetic 26 20.6154 6.90552 1.35428

Total 78 28.9615 10.06401 1.13952

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As shown in Table 6, the mean score of visual learners are again greater than that of auditory and

kinesthetic learners. Above all, the visual learners had the best performance in the delayed

posttest, while kinesthetic learners had the worst performance in delayed posttest. Even though it

seems that their delayed post-test scores were lower than immediate post-test, there are

differences between these three groups. In order to see whether the observed difference was

significant, the results obtained from one way ANOVA (Table 7) will be helpful.

6. One–Way ANOVA of Delayed Post-Test

According to table7, the differences of mean score, in immediate post-test, between learning

styles groups is .000, which is lower than .05 (.000<.05). Thus, there are significant differences

between all groups of students in immediate post-test. In order to detect the source of difference,

the results of the post-hoc tests (Scheffe LSD) provided in Table 8 will be scrutinized in

following part.

Table 7 One-way ANOVA of delayed posttest in all groups ANOVA F Sig

Sum of df Mean 34.291 .000

Squares Square

Immediate

post-test Between Groups 3725.154 2 1862.577

Within Groups 4073.731 75 54.316

Total 7798.885 77

Figure 2 mean score of different learning styles groups in delayed posttest

Table 8 Post-hoc test results of delayed posttest Multiple Comparisons

Dependent Variable: delayed posttest

LSD Dependent

Variable

(I) Group (J) Group

Mean

Difference (I-J) Std. Error Sig.

95% Confidence

Interval

Lower

Bound

Upper

Bound

Delayed

Visual AUDITORY 8.8077* .70335 .013 -.5371 2.2898

Kinesthetic 16.8593* .70764 .000 3.3860 4.2129

AUDITORY Visual -8.8077* .70335 .013 -2.2898 .5371

Kinesthetic 2.2359 .71625 .072 2.4837 5.3624

Kinesthetic Visual -16.8593* .70764 .000 -4.2129 -3.3860

AUDITORY -2. 2359 .71625 .072 -3.3624 -2.4837

*. The mean difference is significant at the 0.05 level.

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According to this table, visual group outperformed audio (.013<0.05) and kinesthetic

(.000<0.05) groups. Even though audio group, again, surpassed kinesthetic group since the alpha

level exceeded the p value (.072>0.05) the difference was not considered to be statistically

significant. Therefore, based on the results obtained from one way ANOVA and further

confirmed via Post-hoc test, the learners who learned vocabulary through visual method did the

best of all three groups in vocabulary achievement. It means that, visual method is an effective

way for improving vocabulary achievement of the learners.

7. Comparing the performance of each group based upon paired-samples t-test

In order to answer the second question and see ―which one of the three groups of learners,

namely visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners, has a better performance in retaining new

words?‖ the performance of the three groups on immediate posttest and delayed posttest were to

be compared. What follow is the results of the analysis and comparisons of the paired sample t-

tests of the three groups.

7.1 Visual Group

As table 9 reveals, the differences in the performance of visual learners between immediate

posttest and delayed posttest are different but the difference does not seem to be significant.

Table 9 paired sample t-test of visual group Paired Samples Test

Paired Differences T Df

Sig. (2-tailed)

95% Confidence

Interval of the Difference

Lower Upper

Pair 1 Immediate posttest–

delayed posttest

2.53678 4.23245 8.222 25 .16

group a = visual

The average mean score of visual group on immediate post-test was 40.9231 and the same

average for delayed post-test was 37.5385 which show a slight difference (3.3846). The two-

tailed significance in table 9 is .16, which is higher than .05 (.16>.05). This shows that although

visual learners’ score in delayed posttest slightly decreased, compared to immediate post-test

scores, the difference was not significant. Thus, the observed decrease could be attributed to the

three weeks’ time interval after the treatment which is plausible as far as their score difference

meets the criterion.

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Figure 3 mean score of different visual learners in immediate and delayed posttest

By looking at figure 3, it can be concluded that the mean score of visual learners slightly

decreased in delayed posttest comparing with immediate posttest, which shows that after three

weeks, students just forgot some of the vocabularies they learnt four weeks ago. Therefore, it

was concluded that the visual method of vocabulary learning was effective even after a period of

three weeks and that it can enhance students’ long term vocabulary recall.

7.2. Auditory group:

As table 10 reveals, the differences in the performance of auditory learners between immediate

posttest and delayed posttest are significantly different (36.1923-28.7308=7.4615). The two-

tailed significance in table 10 is .000, which is lower than .005 (.000<.05). Thus, a type of

significant change in negative direction happened on the scores of this group. This shows that

although auditory learners had the second highest performance, their mean score in delayed

posttest significantly decreased. In other words, auditory method of vocabulary teaching could

not improve students’ long term vocabulary retention.

Table 10 paired sample t-test of auditory group Paired Samples Test

Paired Differences T df

Sig. (2-tailed)

95% Confidence Interval of

the Difference

Lower Upper

Pair 1 Immediate posttest-delayed

posttest

6.01092 8.91215 10.59 25 .000

group b = auditory

Figure 4 mean score difference of auditory learners in immediate and delayed posttest

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Taking a look at figure 4, it can be concluded that the mean score of auditory learners decreased

significantly in delayed posttest comparing with immediate posttest, which shows that after three

weeks, students forgot many of the vocabularies they learnt four weeks ago.

7.3. Kinesthetic Group

Table 11 paired sample t-test of kinesthetic group Paired Samples Test

a

Paired Differences T df

Sig. (2-

tailed)

95% Confidence Interval of

the Difference

Lower Upper

Pair 1 immediate posttest - delayed

posttest

6.64760 11.35240 7.880 25 .000

group c= kinesthetic

Figure5 mean score difference of kinesthetic learners in immediate and delayed posttest

As table 11 and Figure 5 indicate, the differences between the performance of kinesthetic

learners between immediate posttest and delayed posttest are significantly different (29.6154-

19.6154=10). The two-tailed significance in table 11 is .000, which is lower than .05 (.000<.05).

As it was the case with auditory learners, a type of significance in negative direction happened

for kinesthetic learners. This shows that not only kinesthetic learners had the worst performance

on the immediate post-test, but their mean score in delayed posttest also significantly decreased.

In other words, this method was neither effective for short term vocabulary learning, nor for long

term vocabulary retention

Discussion

Based on the research questions of this study it can be pointed out that, regarding the

participants’ performance on immediate and delayed post-test, the visual group performed

significantly better than auditory and kinesthetic groups. Moreover, according to paired sample t-

test, although the differences between immediate and delayed post-test of visual learners is

significant, it is not as significant as the differences between the immediate and delayed post-test

of auditory and kinesthetic learners. To put it more precisely, the retention among visual learners

were greater than that of auditory and kinesthetic learners. Thus, the learners with visual learning

style outperformed other two groups in both experiment regarding vocabulary learning and

retention or long term recall.

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Accordingly, based on the findings of this study, it can be concluded that there is strong

relationship between learning styles and vocabulary learning and retention especially in visual

learners. The findings of the study are in harmony with those obtained by Tight (1997), who

focused on perceptual learning styles matching and L2 vocabulary acquisition. The mean score

of students showed that in post-test respectively, visual, mixed modalities, auditory and tactile

had the best performance, while repeated measure ANOVA revealed that in immediate posttest

the performance of all groups were virtually similar.

These findings also go hand in hand with Lane’s (2001) findings who maintained that our

styles of learning can result in improved attitudes toward learning and an increase in

productivity, academic achievement and creativity. The findings of the study seem to be

compatible with the ones identified by Cheng and Banya (1995), except for the individual learner

learning, which was placed into the negligible learning category in this study.

The findings of the study conducted by Rossi (1995) were in contrary to the ones gained through

the ongoing study since in his study it was shown that the tactile learning style was the preferred

style of the majority of the participants, whereas in this study visual learners outperformed the

two other groups.

Conclusion

Researchers in the field of language learning strategies (LLS) indicated that more proficient

learners seem to employ a variety of strategies in many situations than to less proficient learners.

It has been repeatedly shown that there is a strong relationship between (LLS) and language

performance. Chamut & Kupper (1989) added that learners might not be fully aware of the

strategies they use to the most beneficial strategies to use. Accordingly raising students’

awareness regarding their learning styles might make them not only more prepared for learning

but also more analytic about their learning styles they make use of. Reid (1995) states that

developing an understanding of learning environments and styles ―will enable students to take

control of their learning and to maximize their potential for learning‖ (p. xiv).

Research shows that if teachers can give students instructions relevant to their learning styles, the

performances are usually better (Dunn and Price, 1979; O'Brien, 1989; Oxford and Ehrman,

1993). Whenever the learners’ learning differences are fitted innately with the instructional

procedure, their enthusiasm, performances, and achievement will be increased (Brown 1994).

Some people tend to hear new material, while others learn better off by reading it and still others

would prefer do something with it. Discrepancies frequently take place within the learning styles

of learners in a classroom setting and the teaching preferences of the teacher, which can bring

about some detrimental impact upon learners’ learning of new material.

As explained through literature, perceptual or sensory learning style refers to the physical

atmosphere where we learn new material, and encompasses benefiting from our senses to attain

data. In investigations upon perceptual learning styles, the major findings of Dunn (1990)

supported the present study as he asserted that those learners whose learning style is visual might

have some difficulties in learning through lectures (auditory) in contrast to auditory students who

could learn them through listening. All in all, it is hoped that much research would be carried out

to shed more light on the impact of learning styles and the strategies employed by the learners in

their process of language learning.

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