Perceptual Learning Styles and Teaching Methods in Foreign Language Classroom: A Case Study.

Abstract

The present research explores the learning styles preferences of seventy-two italian native-speakers high school students dealing with English as a foreign language, and examines whether traditional teaching methods do or do not match the pupils favoured perceptual styles. Students completed both a learning style (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile, group and individual) self-assessment tool, and a questionnaire on technology, whose data were subsequently collected and analysed through a mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology. An experimental didactic approach was introduced, based on different activities and multiple teaching modalities to better meet the different necessities of each type of learners. Findings indicate touch is the perceptual modality students most preponderantly rely on, and this study explores the possibility technology may be both one of the reasons behind it and a potential educational answer. The role teachers hold is also discussed, together with the necessity of a more varied and malleable teaching approach.