The Relationship between Learning Styles and Vocabulary Recall among Sensorineural Hearing Loss EFL Learners

Abstract

The present study sought to investigate the relationship between learning style and vocabulary recall of hearing loss EFL learners. Sixty hearing loss Iranian students (26 male and 34 female) of junior high and high school level from two schools in Alborz Province, Iran, were randomly selected for the goal of the present study. Based on the results of learning style questionnaire, the students were divided into three groups (visual learners, aural learners and kinesthetic learners) according to their preferred learning style. The instruments of the study were as follow: 1) A sample of  Oxford Placement Test (2001) to measure the students’ proficiency level, 2) Learning Style Questionnaire (Chislet& Chapman, 2005) to investigate the participants' learning styles, 3) A list of 45 concrete vocabulary items to investigate the vocabulary knowledge of the participants at the pre-test stage, 4) three sets of 10 vocabulary items (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic words) to teach in three different environments which were visual, aural, or kinesthetic, and 5) three post-tests of vocabulary recall with one week interval after each  training session to measure the students’ recall ability. The results of ANOVA revealed that types of word instruction lead to a statistically significant difference in vocabulary recall of students with various preferred learning styles, i.e., vocabulary scores increased sharply when the word instruction was based on auditory and kinesthetic. However, for the participants with visual and kinesthetic learning styles, the vocabulary scores reduced when the words were instructed through auditory training. On the other hand, kinesthetic word instruction was not significantly different from visual word instruction. In addition, the results of non-parametric Chi-Square Test followed by Eta statistics showed that the relationship between learning style and vocabulary recall was statistically significant. To sum up, it can be said that considering different learning style in vocabulary instruction is an effective way, which improves the vocabulary recall.