On the Relationship between Learning Styles and Inner Speech among EFL Learners during Reading Comprehension Tasks

This study was designed to explore the relationship between learning styles and inner speech of Iranian EFL female learners during reading comprehension tasks. According to Vygotsky [34] inner speech is a kind of self-talk that occurs at the level of processing in which thought changes into external speech and external speech changes into thought. Following a quasi-experimental pre-test/post-test design, the present study examined the use of inner speech functions in EFL learners across different learning styles (i.e. auditory vs visual). Thirty upper-intermediate female students took part in six weeks of inner speech instruction. An inner speech functions questionnaire proposed by Guerrero [10] [29] was administered during reading comprehension tasks before and after the instructional intervention. In this way, a profile for each style’s inner speech functions was obtained. Results of data analysis revealed that learners with auditory and visual styles significantly used more inner speech functions in the post-test relative to the pre-test. Moreover, we found a relationship between reading scores and inner speech use in both styles.