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
RaoZhenhui
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 characteristics. To
understand and respect individual’s diverse learning styles, I suggest that
teachers employ instruments to identify students’ learning styles and provide
instructional alternatives to address their differences, and that teachers plan
lessons to match students’ learning styles while at the same time encouraging
students to diversify their learning style preferences. By doing this we can
assist our students in becoming more effective language learners.
