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المستخلص
The perspective on teaching has changed over the late years of the past century. Teaching has become centered on the learner and the learner became the one who is responsible for the learning process. In the same time, the role of the teacher has become a facilitator and participant in the learning process. Hence, the learner has gained a positive role in the learning process.
Generally, in the late decades, the researchers are interested in identifying the factors that may affect the student’s academic achievement in the different educational stages. Various studies had been held to identify the relation between the academic achievement and some variables such as learning styles, motivation toward learning and learning strategies. These variables play an important role in helping the student succeed in the learning situations. This is due to the fact that they belong to the different styles used by the learners in their interaction with the curriculums and on which their academic achievement and level of advance depend.
New educational theories have emerged. These theories are learner-centered and they try to understand the individual differences and design educational models about these differences. One of these theories is the learning styles theory which distinguishes the learner. It means the way people perceive and their way of making decisions. The learning styles are the individual’s repeated natural preferred ways to absorb and manipulate the new information and the different skills as well as remembering it.
The interest in language learning strategies has started as well. They mean specific ideas or behaviors that the learners use in order to help them understand, absorb and keep the new information. They also make the learning faster, more joyful and self-directed. The teachers should teach their students the suitable language learning strategies and when and how to employ these strategies in the new situations.
Another important language learning theory, which is the language learning motivation theory, has emerged. It means the point in which the individual works and pays effort to learn the language due to his/her desire to learn it and the satisfaction that he/she gets through this activity. The theory confirms 3 important elements which are: the attitude toward language learning, the will to learn the language and the level of motivation.
Thus there is a need to investigate the language learning styles and strategies as integrated concepts that work together to improve the student’s learning and increase their achievement and their language learning motivation.
Most of the previous studies proved the importance of studying each concept individually and they did not pay attention to studying the two concepts together although their importance as two concepts that work together to improve the learning process. The both concepts contribute to:
1) Improve students’ attitudes toward the learning.
2) Increase the students’ academic achievement.
3) Provide systematic behaviors inside the classroom.
Due to the fact that most of the Arab researches, within the limits of the researcher’s knowledge, are confined to studying only one concept of the two and they didn’t study the two concepts together. Also these studies didn’t study the relationship between the two concepts (learning styles – language learning strategies) and language learning motivation as well as improving language learning. Thus, the researcher felt the importance of this study in explaining the relationship between the learning styles and English language academic achievement of male and female preparatory school students with the differences in their level of academic achievement ( high academic achievement- low academic achievement- learning difficulties) as well as preparing profiles to these concepts and making them available in an easy form to the teachers in our schools and those who are responsible for the educational process in order to consider them to make the educational process better than ever.
Statement of the problem:
The problem of the research is summarized in the following questions:
Q1:Do the learning styles profile and their arrangement differ according to the gender of the students in the second year of preparatory school who study English as a foreign language?
Q2: Do the language learning strategies profile and their arrangement differ according to the gender of the students in the second year of preparatory school who study English as a foreign language?
Q3: Do the learning styles profile and their arrangement that belong to the second year students in preparatory school who study English as a foreign language differ according to their academic achievement in English language ( high- low- learning difficulties)?
Q4: Do the language learning strategies profile and their arrangement that belong to the second year students in preparatory school who study English as a foreign language differ according to their academic achievement in English language (high- low- learning difficulties)?
Q5: Is there a relationship between the learning styles and language learning motivation of the students in the second year of the preparatory school who study English as a foreign language?
Q6: Is there a relationship between the foreign language learning strategies and the learning motivation of the students in the second year of preparatory school who study English as a foreign language?
Q7: Is it possible to predict the academic achievement of English as a foreign language for second year preparatory school students from their learning styles and language learning strategies?
The research goals:
The current research aims to:
1- to identify each of: the preferred leaning styles and the common foreign language learning strategies which are employed by the students who have high or low academic achievement or those who have difficulties in learning the English language. All of this will be done to use the results to grab the attention of the educational process supervisors to these important concepts, which witnessed an increasing attention in the late years by the psychologists in foreign cultures, in order to consider them when teaching the students because of their significant role in increasing the learners’ achievement and educational competence.
2- To identify any difference in learning styles, language learning strategies that attributes to gender differences or academic achievement in English language (high or low) or those who have learning differences. This all will be done to clarify these differences to the educators and the curriculum planners as well as educational programs in order to consider them and take advantage of them to increase the efficiency of the learning process of the learners in the preparatory school students.
3- The research aims also to understand the correlative relations between the preferred learning styles and the foreign language strategies and the preparatory school students’ motivation to learn the language.
4-the research aims to discover the ability of language learning styles and strategies to predict the academic achievement in English language as a foreign language.
5- McMahon and Rose ( McMahon & Rose , 2004 : 42 ) assure that if the educators try to use learning styles concepts to design teaching methods to teach their students, they will need authentic and consistent methods and tool to evaluate the students’ preferences and their abilities. Thus the current study aims to prepare tools to test the foreign language learning styles and strategies as well as language learning motivation. These tools are suitable for the preparatory school students and provide them with the psychometric features.
6- The research aims also to provide a conception to the educational activities that suits the learning styles and strategies profiles that distinguish the excellent students in learning the English language to enable the teachers to increase the competence of learning English as a foreign language in the preparatory school.
7- to reveal the language learning styles and strategies profiles of the preparatory school students in general and the distinctive profiles of the students who have a high academic achievement in English in particular in order to use the result to grab the attention of the educational process supervisors to these important concepts, which witnessed an increasing attention in the late years by the psychologists in foreign cultures, in order to consider them when teaching the students because of their significant role in increasing the learners’ achievement and educational competence. Moreover, to direct the attention of the people who work in the educational filed over different level to make use of the contemporary attitudes of the educational theories.
8. The Importance of the research:
The importance of the current research is attributed to:
1) It is a response to the call for the necessity of considering the learners’ learning strategies and styles and their motivation toward learning and put them in mind through measuring them and setting their profiles to allow the teacher to consider them while teaching the learners. This will lead to decreasing the imposing of certain teaching strategy that doesnot suit the preferences and abilities of the learners.
2) The issue of identifying the learners’ preferred educational styles is considered essential for reinforcing the learners. The information that we get from the perspective of the learners about their preferred learning styles has a significant value for researchers who are interested in studying and improving the quality of education in schools. They are also important for the teachers as they help them to plan their lessons according to what suits the leaners preferences and this achieves a variety of teaching strategies that compromise all the students in a beiger efficiency that makes the learning more enjoyable and attractive to the learners.
3- Moreover, knowing the learners’ different leaning styles and strategies can provide the teachers and the educators with suitable and effective teaching trends. Not only to increase the learners’ learning motivations but also to decrease the language learning anxiety as well.
5- Each of the learning styles concept and learning strategies concept has its own importance in raising the educational process competence. Hence the importance will be greater when studying the combination of the two concepts together as two integrated concepts. This will allow us to identify the learning styles that suit each strategy.
6- It is a part of the new orientation toward discovering the learners’ abilities and styles of learning English as a foreign language in the preparatory school as there is a tendency among researchers that the language learning problems may not be attributed only to the shortage and inadequacy of the physical and psychological factors of the learners but also to specific problems in their abilities and learning styles and the students’ ability to know when and how to employ the language learning strategies which should be considered during the learning process.
Research terms:
First: Learning styles:
they are the learners’ preferred way to understand, process, insert and recall the new difficult academic content that they study ( Denig,2004:101 ) .
This research is limited to the following three learning styles:
1- The visual learning style: a learning style that is concentrated on reading and seeing. The visual learners prefer the form as an introduction entrance to the visual imagination as in films, photographs and data shows. They need to see the teacher’s body language and his/her facial expressions. They prefer sitting at the front desks of the classroom to avoid the visual obstacles. They learn from visual presentations (data show- video- maps- transparencies) and they tend to make imaginative pictures.
2-Auditory learning style: Auditory learners prefer listening than talking. They like listening to details of any subject. They have a high ability to talk and listen to others. They can interpret the significant meanings of others’ speech through the tone of voice and intonation and the prefer reading loudly or listening to a recorded tape of the subject that they learn.
3- The Kinesthetic/ physical/tactile learning style: the learners of this style prefer learning by work and experiment. The learner is active and sensitive and tries to interpret information through quick useful and practical elements. They prefer to live in a real world and they try to link the information with the external events as they believe that education has no value unless it has a practical useful and clear application .
The learning styles equal the total degree of the learner’s responses on the learning styles scale prepared by the current researcher and which measures the previous three styles.
Secondly: Language Learning Strategies:
Chamot and others( Chamot, et. al 1987 ) defined language learning strategies as “ ways, directions and specific acts done by the learner to facilitate his/her learning to the content of the linguistic information and recall them in the different situations (Alireza& Abdullah, 2010 :36).
(Oxford, 1990) coined the language learning strategies theory which is divided into direct strategies and indirect strategies. It has six categories:
1-Direct strategies: they require a mental processing to the target language. There are three basic groups of direct strategies. Each group processes the target language in a different way and for different purposes.
2-Memory strategies: they include mental processes used for arranging information in a system and make correlations and review them.
3- Cognitive strategies: they include processing the target language so the meaning becomes clearer through operations such as thinking and analysis.
4- Compensation strategies: it enables the leaners to fill the gaps in their knowledge and skills through the meanings of guessing and using signals.
The indirect strategies: they support and manage the language learning without including the target language directly.
Meta cognitive strategies: they enable the learners to plan , organize, evaluate and direct their own learning and manage the mistakes as well.
Affective strategies: they help the leaners acquire the control over their emotions, directions and motivation through decrease the anxiety, self-encouragement and self-rewarding.
Social strategies: they are ways that involve the other individuals in supporting the learning through questions, cooperation and increasing cultural awareness (Hashemi,2011 ,:281)
The language learning strategies equal the total degree of the learner’s responses on the language learning strategies scale prepared by ( Oxford ,1990) and consists of 50 items.
Thirdly: Language Learning Motivation:
Gardner (1985:63) defined the language learning motivation as the degree in which the individual work and pays effort to learn the language because of his/her desire to do so and the satisfaction that he/she gets through this activity.
He stressed three necessary elements which are: the attitude toward language learning, the desire to learn the language and the level of motivation. This degree equals the total responses of the learner to the foreign language learning motivation scale prepared by the current researcher (Alothman, Shuqair, 2013:124)
Research hypotheses:
1- The first hypothesis states that the learning styles profile and their arrangement for the students in the second year of preparatory school who study English as a foreign language will differ according to the gender.
2- The second hypothesis states that the foreign language learning strategies profile and their arrangement for students in the second year of preparatory school who study English as a foreign language will differ according to the gender.
3- The third hypothesis states that the learning styles profile and their arrangement for the students in the second year of preparatory school who study English as a foreign language will differ according to the degree of their academic achievement in English language ( high- low- learning difficulties).
4- The fourth hypothesis states that the language learning strategies profile and their arrangement for the students in the second year of preparatory school who study English as a foreign language will differ according to the degree of their academic achievement in English language ( high- low- learning difficulties).
5- The fifth hypothesis states that there is a relationship between the learning styles and learning motivation for the students who student English as a foreign language in the second year of the preparatory school.
6- The sixth hypothesis states that there is a relationship between the foreign language learning strategies and learning motivation for the students who student English as a foreign language in the second year of the preparatory school.
7- The seventh hypothesis states that the academic achievement of English as a foreign language for the students of the second year in the preparatory school can be predicted through the learning styles and language learning strategies.
Research limitations:
The current research and its results is determined by research sample, instruments and statistical methods used in data processing and results in the research.
1) Research sample:
The research sample consisted of two samples. The first one is an exploratory sample that consisted of (142) male and female students in the second year of preparatory school. The final sample consisted of (572) students from the preparatory school students in Zagazig City- Sharkia governorate. There were (329) male students and (243) female students.
2) Research Instruments:
1- Scale of cognitive learning styles in English (prepared by the researcher)
2- List of foreign language learning strategies by Oxford (Oxford, 1990) (translated and rationed by the researcher)
3- Scale of foreign language learning motivation (prepared by the researcher)
4- Mental capacities test of age 12-15 ( prepared by Dr. Farouk Abdul Fatah)
The data is significantly processed by using suitable statics styles to test the validity of the hypotheses. These styles are:
1- Mean, median, standard deviation and Skewness Kurtosis coefficients to test the moderation of the distribution of the respondents’ grades in the used scales.
2- Tests
3- Mean
4- median
5- Oral tests
6- Pearson Correlation Coefficient
7- Spearman Correlation Coefficient
8- One-way analysis of variance
9-Regression analysis
Research Findings:
1- the first hypothesis isn’t achieved as the “T- test” results showed that there are no statistically significant differences between means of male and female degrees in learning styles ( visual- audible- Kinesthetic). Also the arrangement of the male learning style profiles differs from the female ones. The arrangement of the male student was as follows: Firstly, The visual learning style, then the kinesthetic learning style and finally the audible learning style. Whereas the female leaning styles profiles was follows: firstly, the visual learning style, then the audible and finally the kinesthetic learning style.
2- The second hypothesis isn’t achieved as the “T” test results showed that there are no statistically significant differences between means of male and female degrees in the six language learning strategies. Moreover, it was found that the arrangement of the language learning strategies profiles of the male students was: Meta-Cognitive Strategies, cognitive strategies, compensation strategy, affective strategy , social strategy and memory strategy. The arrangement of the language learning strategies of the female sample was the same as the male one.
3- The third hypothesis is achieved since the one-way analysis of variance showed that there are statistically significant differences at ,01 among the three groups of styles. It was found that students with high academic achievement are higher than those with low academic achievement and those who have learning difficulties in the visual, audible and kinesthetic learning styles.
4- The fourth hypothesis is achieved since the one-way analysis of variance showed that there is a difference in the degree of the academic achievement of students in English language in the six strategies in favor of the students with high academic achievement compared to students with low academic achievement or students with learning difficulties. There are no differences among the students with low academic achievement and students who have learning difficulties in all the six strategies.
5- The fifth hypothesis is achieved since Pearson Correlation Coefficient showed a statically significant positive correlation at 0,01 between each style of the learning styles ( visual- audible- kinesthetic) and learning motivation of students in the second year of preparatory school who study English as a foreign language.
6- The sixth hypothesis is achieved since the results of Spearman Correlation Coefficient showed a statically significant positive correlation at 0,01 between each strategy of the six language learning strategies ( memory- cognitive- compensation- meta cognitive- affective- social) and foreign language learning motivation of students in the second year of preparatory school who study English as a foreign language.
7- The seventh hypothesis is achieved as the results of regression analysis through using Stipe Weiss method showed the possibility of predicting the academic achievement of the second year in preparatory school students who study English as a foreign language through their learning styles (visual learning style and kinesthetic learning style) and through the three language learning strategies (cognitive- metacognitive- compensation).