Investigating the Relationships among Cognitive Learning Styles, Motivation and Strategy Use in Reading English as a Foreign Language

This study aimed at investigating the correlations among three major dimensions of individual differences, learning styles, motivation and strategy use in reading English as a foreign language (EFL). Subjects were 422 Taiwanese undergraduate students from different levels who were classified into two groups according to their reading performance. Three questionnaires were adapted from various researchers and revised for measuring students’ learning styles, motivation and reading strategies. Significant differences were found between skilled and less-skilled readers on visual style and reflective style. Skilled readers were more intrinsically, integratively and instrumentally motivated than less-skilled readers. Moreover, skilled readers were more capable of using metacognitive and cognitive strategies than their less-skilled counterparts. The correlation analysis revealed that there was a strong correlation between motivation, reading strategy use and reading performance, whereas no correlation between learning styles and reading performance was confirmed. Moreover, learning styles, motivation and reading strategies were intercorrelated with each other.