Language learning style preference test

Researchers (e.g. Butler and Lowe, 2010) have suggested that differentiating lessons based on student abilities can give rise to negative findings as the practice was shown to hurt some learners’ feelings and as such, I decided to develop a module according to students’ language learning styles. One of the key characteristics of differentiated instruction is for teachers to respond to different types of learning styles in an attempt to create activities that will be meaningful and of interest to the students. Thus, in line with this requirement, a self-reporting language learning style preference questionnaire (LLSPQ, see Appendix D) was administered to the student-participants prior to the intervention stage.

The questionnaire was adapted from the Perceptual Learning-Style Preference Questionnaire by Reid (1987). The motivation to adapt the instrument stemmed from its purpose: to identify the perceptual learning style preferences of non-native speakers of English and thereby positively impact the areas of curriculum design, materials development, student orientation, and teacher training. The questionnaire was administered by Reid (1987) to 1234 ESL students in 39 intensive English language programmes and to 154 native-speaking university students, and the responses were statistically analysed to identify the relationship between learning style preferences to several variables such as language background, major field of study, level of education, age, sex, and length of time in the United States. Reid’s questionnaire has also been used by other researchers in an ESL context to either merely identify the predominant learning style preference among participants (e.g. Karthigeyan & Nirmala, 2013; Obralić & Akbarov, 2012) or to examine the relationship between participants’ learning styles and overall academic achievement (e.g. Mohamad Jafre, Abbas Ali, Helan Nor & Kiranjit Kaur, 2011).

Considering the participants of my study were either second or foreign language speakers of English, the instrument was deemed suitable. The instrument was also chosen due to its reliability. In Reid’s (1987) study, the instrument was validated by the split-half statistical method. Previous researchers (e.g. Karthigeyan & Nirmala, 2013; Mohamad Jafre et al., 2011) who adapted the instrument for use with ESL speakers at secondary schools found the reliability of the instrument through Cronbach’s alpha to be high, ranging from 0.61 to 0.82 (from Mohamad Jafre et al.’s study) and 0.72 (from Karthigeyan & Nirmala’s study). A construct or variable value exceeding 0.60 is suggested to be reliable (Nunnally, 1978). A pilot study involving a sample similar to the target participants in this study revealed that the translated items are highly reliable with a value of 0.821 (the process of translation discussed at this section end). The results from the pilot study are discussed further in Section 3.6.

The LLSPQ was comprised of items that reflect six learning styles preferences, namely 1) visual, 2) auditory, 3) kinaesthetic, 4) tactile, 5) group learning, and 6) individual learning. With 5 items covering each category, there are a total of 30 items in the instrument. However, the items were not arranged in groups but instead

randomly across the six typologies. For ease of reference, the items arranged according to their respective sets by Reid are shown in Table 3.2.

Table 3.2 Items in the LLSPQ re-arranged according to the 6 typologies Visual

Item

6 I learn better by reading what the teacher writes on the chalkboard. 10 I remember instructions better when I read them.

12 I understand better when I read instructions. 24 I learn better by reading than by listening.

29 I learn more by reading textbooks than by listening to lectures. Tactile

Item

11 I learn more when I can make a model of something. 14 I learn more when I make something for a class project. 16 I learn better when I make drawings as I study.

22 When I build something, I remember what I have learned better. 25 I enjoy creating something for a class project.

Auditory Item

5 I understand better when the teacher explains the instructions verbally. 7 I learn better by listening to explanation in class on how to do something. 9 I remember things I have heard in class better than I remember things I have

read.

17 I learn better in class when the teacher gives a lecture. 20 I learn better in class when I listen to someone.

Group Item

1 In class, I learn best when I work with others.

3 I get more work accomplished when I work with my peers. 4 I learn more when I study with a group.

21 I enjoy working on an assignment with two or three classmates. 23 I prefer to study with other students.

Kinaesthetic Item

2 I prefer to learn by doing or experimenting in class. 8 I learn better by doing or experimenting in class. 15 I enjoy learning in class by doing experiments.

19 I understand things better in class when I participate in role-playing. 26 I learn best in class when I can participate in activities.

Individual Item

13 When I study alone, I remember things better. 18 When I work alone, I learn better.

27 In class, I work better when I work alone. 28 I prefer working on projects all by myself. 30 I prefer to work by myself.

The self-reporting questionnaire contains a five-point Likert scale, arranged in a decreasing degree of intensity of “strongly agree”, “agree”, “undecided”, “disagree”, and “strongly disagree” and students were requested to circle one response for each item. The questionnaire was also translated into Malay to facilitate the student- participants’ comprehension as Malay is spoken as either a native language or the national language (by non-Malay students). The decision to translate was driven by the wish to minimise errors which could otherwise have arisen if items in a second or foreign language were misinterpreted by the participants. The translation was completed using one of the widely used procedures, i.e. the translation–back- translation procedure (van der Vijver & Leung, 1997) by using multiple translators; the instrument is first translated into the target language by one translator and later translated back to the source language by a second translator. Thus, in implementing the procedure, I first translated the original questionnaire into Malay and the translated questionnaire was given to an independent translator. The independent translator was a graduate researcher with a master’s degree in Linguistics at the School of Language Studies and Linguistics of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) who had no previous knowledge of the questionnaire. Finally, a licensed translator and lecturer in the translation field at UKM was also appointed to finalise the instrument.

The questionnaire is accompanied by a self-scoring sheet (see Appendix E). Every selected response is assigned a numerical value ranging from 1 to 5. At the end of the test, the values were tallied and multiplied by 2 to obtain a total score in order to identify one of the following learning style categories: major, minor or negligible (Reid, 1995). Major is a learner’s preferred leaning style, whereas minor indicates one in which the learner can still nevertheless function well. However, negligible suggests a learning style that may impede the learning process as it is a style that is difficult for the learner to adapt.