High-School Students’ Dominant Learning Styles Preferences in Learning English: How are “Good Language Learners” Different from the Ordinary Ones?

Many researchers have investigated different aspects of learning styles. Nevertheless, few studies have considered interactions between the notions of learning styles and “good language learners’” achievement. The present study aimed at exploring dominant learning style preferences by senior high-school students and comparing their preferences with those by “good language learners”. To this goal, the Index of Learning Style (ILS) was administered. A sample consisting of 1307 senior high-school Iranian students (711 males and 596 females was randomly picked up from among a population of 3310 students, who could potentially participate in the study. In terms of the participants’ achievement scores, 343 top students were arbitrarily categorized as “good language learners” and the remaining 964 as “the average language learners”. The results of the (ILS) showed that most of the participants preferred ‘reflective’, ‘sensing’, ‘visual’, and ‘sequential’ learning styles. A two-way ANOVA test revealed that the difference between the participants’ mean scores was due to both their genders and Visual/Verbal and Sequential/Global preferences. Findings about the relationship between learning styles and the participants’ achievement scores indicated that except for the ‘understanding’ dimension, there was no significant relationship between the other three dimensions and the participants’ achievement scores. Moreover, the Chi-square statistic indicated a significant difference between the learning style preferences by senior high-school “good language learners” and those preferred by the average ones.