The role of learning styles in SLA

Abstract

In the present study, I will offer a review of the main theoretical aspects of learning styles and a description of the preferred learning styles by a sample of Spanish learners. The first section – the review of literature – is divided into three parts. The first one examines the individual factors – age, sex, aptitude, motivation, personality, learning strategies and learning styles – which have a certain influence in SLA. The second part focuses entirely on learning styles providing the alternative definitions and classifications established by different authors such as Kolb (1976), Knowles (1982) and Reid (1987). Finally, the last part of this section deals with the interactions between individual factors such as age, gender, nationality or learning experience, among others, and perceptual learning style preferences established by Reid (1987). The next section presents the results of a survey carried out among a group of Spanish EFL learners. The first part will establish the main goals of the study by asking different research questions. The second part will explain the methodology adopted by describing the instrument used and how the data provided by respondents was manipulated for its analysis. Finally, the study will present the results by giving the analysis of the data in order to answer the different previously proposed research questions. Furthermore, this data will be compared with the information provided by previous studies. One final section will be devoted to the conclusions and will also present some proposals for future research in this field