A CORRELATIONAL STUDY OF IRANIAN PRE-UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ LEARNING STYLES AND THEIR LANGUAGE ACHIEVEMENT

The purpose of this study was to identify the dominant learning styles of the EFL (English as a foreign language) learners and to determine what kinds of relationships existed between studentsʹ learning style preferences and their level of achievement. Participants of this study were 115 Iranian EFL learners, all of whom pre-university students of Kerman, Iran, majoring in Mathematics, Literature, and Natural Sciences. In order to obtain the required data, a questionnaire and an achievement test were utilized: Reidʹs (1987) Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire and the studentsʹ learning scores on the final exam. The findings after collecting and interpreting the data, revealed that there is a meaningful relationship between the studentsʹ learning style preferences and their level of achievement. It also implies that the studentsʹ achievement is influenced by their learning style preferences. The dominant learning style preferences for the sample were mostly visual learners and preferred the information be present in the form of pictures, diagrams, charts and readings. As far as gender was concerned, there werenʹt any differences between two groups of males and females in using learning styles. Also, there were not any significant relationships between the study variables of age and field of the participantsʹ study. The results indicated that; The most preferred learning style category was the visual category and it is able to predict the achievement variable with 99 percent confidence. The kinesthetic variable was the preferred learning style after visual, so it can play a role as a secondary predictor in regression equation. The auditory, tactile, and group learning styles can play a role as secondary predictor in regression equation with achievement after kinesthetic, respectively. There is not any significant relationship between achievement and individual variable; so, individual variable canʹt lonely play a role as secondary predictor in regression equation.