compare the two article how they are similar and how they are different? how do their conclusions compare?
Today I’d like to take you on a
journey across the world. We’ll be going to such different places as Manitoba,
India, Japan, Minnesota and China … – looking for different ways that people
learn. We’ll be looking at how different cultures shape different learning
styles.
Let’s start from Canada and meet
the Inuit people. The Inuits live in the northern part of North America and
Siberia. They’re often called Eskimos, but they dislike this name and actually
regard it as offensive. Anyway, this is something that actually happened some
time ago during a report-card meeting between teachers and parents at a local
school. There was this Inuit parent talking to her child’s Canadian teacher. At
a certain point, the teacher said: “Your son is talking well in class. He is
speaking up a lot.”. And, much to her surprise, the Inuit parent replied: “I am
sorry” (quoted in Atkinson 1997).
Clearly, there was a clash of
expectations here. The teacher was praising the child’s active participation in
class, on the assumption that children at school should be taking part in
lessons by asking questions, discussing things with the teacher and classmates,
reacting to what is said and done by the teacher. But the Inuit parent had
quite a different idea of what going to school and learning mean, of what
teachers and students should be doing in class. For her, the role of the
student was basically to listen, observe and learn. Now, we can’t appreciate
this position unless we know that silence is very much valued in the Inuit
culture: if adults don’t know each other very well, they often remain silent
while they’re in close contact. On the other hand, for the Inuit parent the
role of the teacher was to explain, ask questions and transmit knowledge – so
she was sorry that her child had broken what she took for granted as the
appropriate school norms.
So what we are going to explore
today are some of the ways in which cultures can influence learning styles. But
first, what do we mean by “learning styles”, and what do we mean by “culture”?
For the purposes of this talk, we’ll say that learning styles are the unique
ways in which individual people perceive, interact with and respond to a
learning experience. In a way, your learning style is a reflection of your
overall personality.
One interesting way of describing learning styles is to use the
“onion” metaphor. If we look at the most external layer of the onion, that will
refer to your environmental preferences – for example, your preferences in
terms of when and where you prefer to study, if you prefer to get up early in
the morning or stay up late at night, if you need to eat and drink before,
during or after your study sessions, what kind of breaks you need, if you
prefer to sit, lie or stand, and things like that. If you peel off this layer,
you’ll find your preferences in terms of sensory modalities or ways of
perceiving information –whether you tend to be a visual, auditory or
kinaesthetic learner – or maybe a mixture of the three. Further inside the
onion, you come to your cognitive styles, your personal ways of processing
information – for instance, you may place yourself somewhere on the continuum
between the two extremes of being analytical, systematic, reflective, at one
end, and being global, intuitive, impulsive at the other end. And finally, when
you get to the core of the onion, you reach your personality traits, for
instance, your tendency to be an introvert rather than an extrovert, your
preference for individual rather than group work, the different degrees in
which you can cope with anxiety or can tolerate ambiguity, and so on.
Obviously, as you peel off the various layers of the onion, you progressively
reach parts of your learning style which are more and more stable and therefore
less and less easy to change.
So when we talk about learning
styles we are concerned with individual differences, we are asking the
question: How are individuals different when they learn? On the other hand,
when we turn to culture, the magic word isshared– here we are not concerned with
individuals, but rather with what these individuals, taken collectively, share
as a result of living together for a long time.
What is it that we share with all
the other members of our culture? We share, first of all, many tangible things,
like the way we dress, the food we eat, the way our houses and flats are built
and furnished … but, deeper inside the onion, we also share the way we behave,
verbally and non-verbally – for example, what we find or don’t find appropriate
to say in certain circumstances, or the use of gestures, facial expressions,
eye contact, proximity with other people. And, as you peel off other layers and
approach the core of the onion, you find that we share the most invisible but
probably the most important components of our culture – the meaning we attach
to people, things and events, our deeply felt beliefs, attitudes and values –
in a word, our way of knowing the world. This, of course, includes the way we
think schools should be run, what should be taught and how, what teachers and
students should do in class.
Of course, it is only too easy and
natural that we should assume that what is valued and important and “right” for
us is the same for other cultures. These “cultural assumptions” are easy to
make: for instance, we can assume that black is the colour of mourning
everywhere in the world, but in India and Japan it’s white. Or we can assume
that brides traditionally wear white, but Indian women marry in red. For us, a
dragon carries the idea of “danger”, but in China dragons bring good fortune.
So it becomes essential to get to
know how cultures actually make meaning of the world. To do this, one obvious
first step could be to ask the learners themselves. Let’s have a look at an
example from Minnesota. But before that, a word of warning: whenever we talk
about cultural differences, stereotypes are round the corner, so we should be
very careful about making generalisations. This is a point we’ll come back to
later.
In a literacy class for Southeast Asian students, during a lesson
on family values and childrearing practices, learners compared their views and
values with those of Americans, and this is what they came up with (quoted in
Quintero 1994):
Matching Teaching Styles with Learning
Styles in East Asian Contexts
Rao Zhenhui
rzhthm [at] public.nc.jx.cn
Foreign Languages College, Jiangxi Normal University (Nanchang, China)
Examples of Mismatches Between Teaching and Learning Styles
Liu
Hong, a third-year English major in Jiangxi Normal University, China, was in
David’s office again. After failing David’s oral English course the previous
year, Liu Hong had reenrolled, hoping to pass it this year. Unfortunately,
things were not looking promising so far, and she was frustrated. When David
asked why she was so unhappy in his class, she said: “I am an introverted,
analytic and reflective student. I don’t know how to cope with your
extroverted, global and impulsive teaching style?”
Jenny, an American teacher from California, sat in Dean’s office
again, feeling perplexed by the students’ negative responses to her kinesthetic
and global styles of teaching. Despite Jenny’s persistent efforts to convince
the students of the advantages of her teaching styles, she was told by her
Vietnamese colleagues that her attempts were in opposition to the prevalent
teaching styles in Vietnam. Jenny had specialized in applied linguistics for a
long time and was well trained in the TESOL area in U.S.A. But all of a sudden,
it seemed that all her teaching competence and experience had become useless in
such a country where she had never been before.
Analyzing the Examples
The
above statements are representative of serious mismatches between the learning
styles of students and the teaching style of the instructor. In a class where
such a mismatch occurs, the students tend to be bored and inattentive, do
poorly on tests, get discouraged about the course, and may conclude that they
are not good at the subjects of the course and give up (Oxford et al, 1991).
Instructors, confronted by low test grades, may become overtly critical of
their students or begin to question their own competence as teachers, as
exemplified by the Jenny’s case above.
To reduce teacher-student style conflicts, some researchers in the
area of learning styles advocate teaching and learning styles be matched (e.g.
Griggs & Dunn, 1984; Smith & Renzulli, 1984; Charkins et al, 1985),
especially in foreign language instruction (e.g. Oxford et al, 1991; Wallace
& Oxford, 1992). Kumaravadivelu (1991:98) states that: “… the
narrower the gap between teacher intention and learner interpretation, the
greater are the chances of achieving desired learning outcomes”. There are
many indications (e.g. Van Lier, 1996; Breen, 1998) that bridging the gap
between teachers’ and learners’ perceptions plays an important role in enabling
students to maximize their classroom experience.
Purpose of this Article
This
article describes ways to make this matching feasible in real-life classroom
teaching in East Asian and comparable contexts. The assumption underlying the
approach taken here is that the way we teach should be adapted to the way
learners from a particular community learn. But before exploring how the
teaching styles and learning styles can be matched, let us first examine
traditional East Asian students’ learning style preferences in dealing with
language learning tasks.
Traditional East Asian Learning Styles
Traditionally,
the teaching of EFL in most East Asian countries is dominated by a
teacher-centered, book-centered, grammar-translation method and an emphasis on
rote memory (Liu & Littlewood, 1997). These traditional language teaching
approaches have resulted in a number of typical learning styles in East Asian
countries, with introverted learning being one of them. In East Asia, most
students see knowledge as something to be transmitted by the teacher rather
than discovered by the learners. They, therefore, find it normal to engage in
modes of learning which are teacher-centered and in which they receive
knowledge rather than interpret it. According to Harshbarger el al (1986),
Japanese and Korean students are often quiet, shy and reticent in language
classrooms. They dislike public touch and overt displays of opinions or
emotions, indicating a reserve that is the hallmark of introverts. Chinese
students likewise name “listening to teacher “as their most frequent
activity in senior school English classes (Liu & Littlewood, 1997). All
these claims are confirmed by a study conducted by Sato (1982), in which she
compared the participation of Asian students in the classroom interaction with
that of non-Asian students. Sato found that the Asians took significant fewer
speaking turns than did their non-Asian classmates (36.5% as opposed to 63.5%).
The teacher-centered classroom teaching in East Asia also leads to
a closure-oriented style for most East Asian students. These closure-oriented
students dislike ambiguity, uncertainty or fuzziness. To avoid these, they will
sometimes jump to hasty conclusions about grammar rules or reading themes. Many
Asian students, according to Sue and Kirk (1972), are less autonomous, more
dependent on authority figures and more obedient and conforming to rules and
deadlines. Harshbarger at al (1986) noted that Korean students insist that the
teacher be the authority and are disturbed if this does not happen. Japanese
students often want rapid and constant correction from the teacher and do not
feel comfortable with multiple correct answers. That is why Asian students are
reluctant to “stand out” by expressing their views or raising
questions, particularly if this might be perceived as expressing public
disagreement (Song, 1995).
Perhaps the most popular East Asian learning styles originated
from the traditional book-centered and grammar-translation method are analytic
and field-independent. In most of reading classes, for instance, the students
read new words aloud, imitating the teacher. The teacher explains the entire
text sentence by sentence, analyzing many of the more difficult grammar
structures, rhetoric, and style for the students, who listen, take notes, and
answer questions. Oxford & Burry-Stock (1995) states that the Chinese,
along with the Japanese, are often detail-and precision-oriented, showing some
features of the analytic and field-independent styles. They have no trouble
picking out significant detail from a welter of background items and prefer
language learning strategies that involve dissecting and logically analyzing
the given material, searching for contrasts, and finding cause-effect
relationship.
Another characteristically East Asian learning style is visual
learning. In an investigation of sensory learning preferences, Reid (1987)
found that Korean, Chinese and Japanese students are all visual learners, with
Korean students ranking the strongest. They like to read and obtain a great
deal of visual stimulation. For them, lectures, conversations, and oral directions
without any visual backup are very confusing and can be anxiety-producing. It
is obvious that such visual learning style stems from a traditional classroom
teaching in East Asia, where most teachers emphasize learning through reading
and tend to pour a great deal of information on the blackboard. Students, on
the other hand, sit in rows facing the blackboard and the teacher. Any
production of the target language by students is in choral reading or in
closely controlled teacher-students interaction (Song, 1995). Thus, the
perceptual channels are strongly visual (text and blackboard), with most
auditory input closely tied to the written.
Closely related to visual, concrete-sequential, analytic and
field-independent styles are the thinking-oriented and reflective styles.
According to Nelson (1995), Asian students are in general more overtly
thinking-oriented than feeling oriented. They typically base judgement on logic
and analysis rather than on feelings of others, the emotional climate and
interpersonal values. Compared with American students, Japanese students, like
most Asians, show greater reflection (Condon, 1984), as shown by the concern
for precision and for not taking quick risk in conversation (Oxford et al,
1992). Quite typical is “the Japanese student who wants time to arrive at
the correct answer and is uncomfortable when making guess” (Nelson,
1995:16). The Chinese students have also been identified to posses the same
type of thinking orientation by Anderson (1993).
The final East Asian preferred learning style is
concrete-sequential. Students with such a learning style are likely to follow
the teacher’s guidelines to the letter, to be focused on the present, and
demand full information. They prefer language learning materials and techniques
that involve combinations of sound, movement, sight, and touch and that can be
applied in a concrete, sequential, linear manner. Oxford & Burry-Stock
(1995) discovered that Chinese and Japanese are concrete-sequential learners,
who use a variety of strategies such as memorization, planning, analysis,
sequenced repetition, detailed outlines and lists, structured review and a
search for perfection. Many Korean students also like following rules
(Harshbarger et al, 1986), and this might be a sign of a concrete-sequential
style.
It is worth noting that the generalizations made above about
learning styles in East Asia do not apply to every representative of all East
Asian countries; many individual exceptions of course exist. Nevertheless,
these seemingly stereotypical descriptions do have a basis in scientific
observation. Worthley (1987) noted that while diversity with any culture is the
norm, research shows that individuals within a culture tend to have a common
pattern of learning and perception when members of their culture are compared
to members of another culture.
Matching Teaching Styles with Learning Styles
From the descriptions and scientifically observed data reviewed above, it is
legitimate to conclude that there exist identifiable learning styles for most
East Asian students. We can assume, therefore, that any native English speaker
engaged in teaching English to East Asian students is likely to confront a
teaching-learning style conflict. This is illustrated by the two examples cited
at the very beginning of this paper and further confirmed by Reid’s (1987) and
Melton’s (1990) studies. Such style differences between students and teachers
consistently and negatively affect student grades (Wallace and Oxford, 1992).
It is when students’ learning styles are matched with appropriate approaches in
teaching that their motivation, performances, and achievements will increase
and be enhanced (Brown, 1994).
In what follows, I give examples of how teacher’s teaching style
can be matched with students’ learning style in East Asian settings. I obtained
these ideas from several sources, including descriptions in books and published
articles; responses to a recent questionnaire I sent to selected overseas
students from Japan, Korea and China in Australia; and my own teaching
experience in China. The approaches are classified in the following categories:
1.
Diagnosing learning
styles and developing self-aware EFL learners
2.
Altering the teaching
style to create teacher-student style matching
3.
Encouraging changes in
students’ behavior and fostering guided style-stretching
4.
Providing activities
with different groupings
Diagnosing Learning Styles and Developing Self-aware EFL
Learners
Effective
matching between teaching style and learning style can only be achieved when
teachers are, first of all, aware of their learners’ needs, capacities,
potentials and learning style preferences in meeting these needs. To this end,
teachers may use assessment instruments such as the Myers-Briggs Type
Indications Survey (Myers and McCaulley, 1985), the Keirsey Temperament Sorter
(Keirsey & Bates, 1984) and the Classroom Work Style Survey (Kinsella,
1996). These instruments are sensitive to the kinds of style differences that
are affected by culture. Although this kind of assessment is not comprehensive,
it does indicate students’ preferences and provide constructive feedback about
advantages and disadvantages of various styles.
Before a survey is administered, the teacher should give a
mini-lecture, trying to:
·
establish interest: what
learning styles are
·
define general terms:
for example, survey, questionnaire, perceptual, tally
·
discuss how learning
styles are determined and used by students and teachers
·
explain how to tally
results of surveys
·
persuade students of the
benefits of identifying their learning styles
Following
the lecture, the teacher can ask students to work in pairs to share notes from
the mini-lecture. By doing this, they can expect to further clarify the concept
of survey taking and have a more specific idea of what learning styles are.
While the pair-work is in process, the teacher should be prepared to answer any
questions that may arise. Then, students are ready to complete the
questionnaire. If they have questions or need assistance, the teacher can
mini-conference with them individually. Finally, students can start summarizing
their individual style results in the survey.
The next step is for the teacher to organize a whole-class
discussion of the style assessment results. The teacher can write the major
learning styles on the blackboard and ask the students to write their names
under their major styles in a list. Then, in a full-class discussion, everybody
is aware that the class is indeed a mixture of styles and full of similarities
and differences in learning style preferences. This discussion helps eliminate
some of the potential of a teacher-student “style war” if the teacher
talks about his or her own style during this time. I have found students are
intensely interested in talking about their own style and the styles of their
peers and teachers. When such style discussions are constructive, students’
initial interest in self-awareness is rewarded and deepened.
Furthermore, based on these style assessment results, the teacher
can build classroom community by asking students to find several other students
whose major learning style matches their own, and sit in a group with those
students. They follow instructions (written on the blackboard or on a
transparence) to share their summarized results and analyze those results. This
discussion often starts slowly, but it becomes increasingly animated as
students discover similarities and differences. In addition, teachers can use
the survey results to identify style patterns among various groups of students
in their classes, which they should consider when designing learning tasks.
There are, however, dangers if learning assessment, diagnosis, and
prescription are misused. We can, at least, list three shortcomings of existing
self-assessment instruments: 1). The instruments are exclusive (i.e. they focus
on certain variables); 2). the students may not self-report accurately; and 3).
the students have adapted for so long that they may report on adapted
preferences. In order to ensure a reliability of such learning style
instruments, Doyle and Rutherford (1984) call for taking into account the
nature of the learning tasks, the relationship between teacher and student, and
other situational variables. Further, Reid (1987:102) warns: “Both teachers
and students involved in identifying and using information on learning styles
should proceed with caution and be aware that no single diagnostic instrument
can solve all learning problems”
For all of these reasons, I recommend using diaries as a supplemental
tool. By reflecting the processes that go on inside the writers’ minds, they
open up fields that are normally not accessible to researchers, and are thus
able to provide an important complement to other research tools. Before
students start keeping diaries, they should be issued with a set of guidelines
about how to keep their diaries and what to look out for. Each student is asked
to keep a journal of their reactions to the course, their teachers, their
fellow students and any other factors which they consider are having an effort
on their learning. Students are told to describe only those events which they
think are of interest. Also to be included in the diary are the problems
students have found in their encounter with the foreign language, and what they
plan to do about it. The language in which these records have to be kept is not
necessarily specified, but it is better for them to use the target language.
The diaries are collected in at regular intervals, photocopied and
then returned immediately to the diarists. The students are assured that the
material in their diaries will be treated in full confidentiality. For the
analysis of these diaries, Bailey (1990) recommends a five-stage procedure, in
which the researcher first edits the diary and then looks for recurring
patterns and significant events.
Altering the Teaching Style to Create Teacher-student Style
Matching
In all
academic classrooms, no matter what the subject matter, there will be students
with multiple learning styles and students with a variety of major, minor and
negative learning styles. An effective means of accommodating these learning
styles is for teachers to change their own styles and strategies and provide a
variety of activities to meet the needs of different learning styles. Then all
students will have at least some activities that appeal to them based on their
learning styles, and they are more likely to be successful in these activities.
Hinkelman and Pysock (1992), for example, have demonstrated the effectiveness
of a multimedia methodology for vocabulary building with Japanese students.
This approach is effective in tapping a variety of learning modalities. By
consciously accommodating a range of learning styles in the classroom in this
way, it is possible to encourage most students to become successful language
learners.
In addition, EFL teachers in East Asia should consider culturally
related style differences as they plan how to teach. Following is a list of
activities for East Asian learners that could be tried for each style:
Visual learning style preference
1.
Read resources for new
information.
2.
Use handouts with
activities.
3.
Keep journals of class
activities to reinforce vocabulary or new information.
4.
Watch an action skit.
Write narrative of events.
5.
Take notes on a lecture.
Outline the notes to reinforce ideas and compare with others.
(Melton, 1990:43)
Analytic
learning style preference
1.
Judge whether a sentence
is meaningful. If the sentence is not meaningful, the student changes it so
that it makes sense.
2.
Give students a list of
related vocabulary words (such as a list of foods, animals, gifts, etc.) and
ask them to rank these words according to their personal preferences.
3.
Give students questions
to which two or three alternative answers are provided. Students’ task is to
choose one of the alternatives in answering each question.
4.
Ask students to express
their opinions as to agree or disagree with a given statement. If they
disagree, they reword the statement so that it represents their own ideas.
The prospect of altering language instruction to somehow
accommodate different learning styles might seem forbidding to teachers. This
reaction is understandable. Teaching styles are made up of methods and
approaches with which teachers feel most comfortable; if they try to change to
completely different approaches, they would be forced to work entirely with
unfamiliar, awkward, and uncomfortable methods. Fortunately, teachers who wish
to address a wide variety of learning styles need not make drastic changes in
their instructional approach. Regular use of some the instructional techniques
given below should suffice to cover some specified learning style categories in
most East Asian countries.
·
Make liberal use of
visuals. Use photographs, drawings, sketches, and cartoons to illustrate and
reinforce the meanings of vocabulary words. Show films, videotapes, and live
dramatizations to illustrate lessons in text.
·
Assign some repetitive
drill exercises to provide practice in basic vocabulary and grammar, but don’t
overdo it.
·
Do not fill every minute
of class time lecturing and writing on the blackboard. Provide intervals for
students to think about what they have been told; assign brief writing
exercises.
·
Provide explicit
instruction in syntax and semantics to facilitate formal language learning and
develop skill in written communication and interpretation.
Encouraging Changes in Students’ Behavior and Fostering Guided
Style-stretching
Learning
style is a consistent way of functioning which reflects cultural behavior
patterns and, like other behaviors influenced by cultural experiences, may be
revised as a result of training or changes in learning experiences. Learning
styles are thus “moderately strong habits rather than intractable
biological attributes” (Reid, 1987:100). With a moderate training,
Sub/unconscious styles can become conscious learning strategies. However, all
these should be best done in an intentional way with guidance from the teacher.
For example, an important aspect of instructional style for many Korean
students might involve weaning them from rote repetition, slowly guiding them
into real communication in authentic language situation. An effective
instructional style for dealing with many Chinese students might include paying
attention to the individual, creating a structured but somewhat informal
classroom atmosphere to ease students out of their formality, introducing
topics slowly, avoiding embarrassment, and being consistent.
The following are examples of teaching activities that guide East
Asian students to alter their learning behaviors, stretch their learning styles
and enable them to improve their language performance.
·
Groups of four or five
learners are given cards, each with a word on it. Each person describes his
word in the foreign language to the others in the group without actually using
it. When all students have described their word successfully, the students take
the first letter of each and see what new word the letters spell out. (Puzzle
parts might also depict objects in a room; in this case, when all the words
have been guessed, the group decides which room of the house has been
described.)
·
Class members are placed
in pairs or in larger groups. Each student has a blank piece of paper. He
listens to his partner or the group leader who has a picture to describe (the
teacher can provide the picture or students can choose their own). As his
partner describes the picture, the student tries to draw a rough duplicate
according to the description he hears.
Providing Activities with Different Groupings
In a
class made up of students with various learning styles and strategies, it is
always helpful for the teacher to divide the students into groups by learning
styles and give them activities based on their learning styles. This should
appeal to them because they will enjoy them and be successful. For example, the
group made up of the extroverted may need the chance to express some ideas
orally in the presence of one or many class members. On the other hand, the
group made up of the introverted may need some encouragement to share ideas
aloud and may want the safety of jotting down a few notes first and perhaps
sharing with one other person before being invited or expected to participate
in a group discussion.
In addition to trying style-alike groups for greatest efficiency,
the teacher can also use style-varied groups for generating greatest
flexibility of styles and behaviors. Teachers should avoid grouping introverts
with each other all the time. It is often helpful to include open students and
closure-oriented students in the same group; the former will make learning
livelier and more fun, while the latter will ensure that the task is done on
time and in good order. But before students are divided into groups, they
should be aware of the divisions and understand what they are doing and why
they are doing it. Wu (1983) concludes that Chinese students usually respond
well to activities when they realize what the purposes behind them are.
Finally, no matter how students are to be grouped, teachers should
make a conscious effort to include various learning styles in daily lesson
plan. One simple way to do this is to code the lesson plans so that a quick
look at the completed plan shows if different learning styles have been
included. Putting “A” or “V” beside activities that denote
whether they are primarily appealing to the analytic learner or the visual
learner will serve as a reminder that there is a need for mixture of both kinds
of activities. Meanwhile, simply designating various parts of the lesson plan
with letters (I for individual, P for pair, SG for small group, LG for large
group) and other symbols reminds the teacher to pay attention to learning
styles. The coding is not meant to be extra work for the teacher or to make
classes seem artificial or unspontaneous. If the coding system is used on a
regular basis, it becomes very natural to think in terms of being inclusive, or
providing the setting and the activities by which all learners can find some
portion of the class that particularly appeals to them.
Conclusion
In this
article I have discussed the significance of matching teaching and learning
styles in East Asian countries and provided some empirical evidence to indicate
that East Asian students exhibit distinctive learning style char
