Four dimensions of Learning styles

Four dimensions of learning style are most strongly associated with L2 learning: sensory preferences, personality types, desired degree of generality, and biological differences. Learning styles are not dichotomous (black or white, present or absent), but generally operate on multiple, intersecting continua. For example, a person might be more extroverted than introverted, or more closure-oriented than open, or equally visual and auditory but less kinesthetic and tactile. Few if any people could be classified as having all or nothing in any of these categories.

Sensory Preferences

Sensory preferences can be broken down into four main areas: visual, auditory, kinesthetic (movement-oriented), and tactile (touch-oriented). Sensory preferences refer to the physical, perceptual learning channels with which the student is the most comfortable. Visual students like to read and obtain a great deal from visual stimulation. For them, lectures, conversations, and oral instructions without any visual backup can be very confusing. In contrast, auditory students are comfortable without visual input and therefore enjoy and profit from unembellished lectures, conversations, and oral instructions. They are excited by classroom interactions in role plays and similar activities. They sometimes, however, have difficulty with written work. Kinesthetic and tactile students like lots of movement and enjoy working with tangible objects, collages, and flashcards. Sitting at a desk for very long is not for them; they prefer to have frequent breaks and move around the room. Reid (1987) demonstrated that ESL students varied significantly in their sensory preferences, with people from certain cultures differentially favoring the four different ways of learning. Students from Asian cultures, for instance, were often highly visual, with Koreans being the most visual. Many studies, including Reid's, found that.

Hispanic learners were frequently auditory. Reid discovered that Japanese were very nonauditory. ESL students from a variety of cultures were tac­tile and kinesthetic in their sensory preferences.

Personality Types

Another style aspect that is important for L2 education is personality type, which consists of four strands: extroverted versus introverted; intuitive-random versus sensing-sequential; thinking versus feeling; and closure-oriented/judging versus open/perceiving. Personality type (often called psychological type) is a construct based on the work of psychologist Carl Jung. Ehrman and Oxford (1989, 1990) found significant relationships between personality type and L2 proficiency in native-English-speaking learners of foreign languages.

Extroverted versus Introverted

By definition, extroverts gain their greatest energy from the external world. They want interaction with people and have many friendships, some deep and some not. In contrast, introverts derive their energy from the internal world, seeking solitude and tending to have just a few friendships, which are often very deep. Extroverts and introverts can learn to work together with the help of the teacher. Enforcing time limits in the L2 classroom can keep extroverts' enthusiasm to a manageable level. Rotating the person in charge of leading L2 discussions gives introverts an opportunity to participate equally with extroverts.

Intuitive-Random versus Sensing-Sequential

Intuitive-random students think in abstract, futur­istic, large-scale, and nonsequential ways. They like to create theories and new possibilities, often have sudden insights, and prefer to guide their own learning. In contrast, sensing-sequential learners are grounded in the here and now. They like facts rather than theories, want guidance and specific instruction from the teacher, and look for consistency. The key to teaching both intuitive-random and sensing-sequential learners is to offer variety and choice: sometimes a highly organized structure for sensing-sequential learners, and at other times multiple options and enrichment activities for intuitive-random students.

Thinking versus Feeling

Thinking learners are oriented toward the s truth, even if it hurts some people's feelings. They want to be viewed as competent and do not tend to offer praise easily—even though they might secretly desire to be praised themselves. Sometimes they seem detached. In comparison, feeling learners value other people in very personal ways. They show empathy and compassion through words, not just behaviors, and say whatever is needed to smooth over difficult situations.

They want to be respected for personal contributions and hard work. L2 teachers can help thinking learners show greater overt compassion to their feeling classmates and can suggest that feeling learners might tone down their emotional expression while working with thinking learners.

Closure-oriented/Judging versus Open/Perceiving

Closure-oriented students want to reach judgments or completion quickly and want clarity as soon as possible. These students are serious, hardworking learners who like to be given written information and enjoy specific tasks with deadlines. Sometimes their desire for closure hampers the development of fluency (Ehrman and Oxford 1989). In contrast, open learners want to stay available for continuously new perceptions and are therefore called "perceiving." They take L2 learning less seriously, treating it like a game to be enjoyed rather than a set of tasks to be completed. Open learners dislike deadlines; they want to have a good time and seem to soak up L2 information by osmosis rather than hard effort. Open learners sometimes do better than closure-oriented learners in developing fluency (Ehrman and Oxford 1989), but they are at a disadvantage in a traditional classroom setting. Closure-oriented and open learners provide a good balance for each other in the L2 classroom. The former are task-driven learners, and the latter know how to have fun. Skilled L2 teachers sometimes con­sciously create cooperative groups that include both types of learners, since they can benefit from collaboration with each other.

Desired Degree of Generality

This strand contrasts the learner who focuses on the main idea or big picture with the learner who concentrates on details. Global or holistic students like socially interactive, communicative events in which they can emphasize the main idea and avoid analysis of grammatical details. They are comfortable even when not having all the information, and they feel free to guess from the context. Analytic students tend to concentrate on grammatical details and often avoid more free-flowing communicative activities. Because of their concern for precision, analytic learners typically do not take the risks necessary for guessing from the context unless they are fairly sure of the accuracy of their guesses. The global student and the analytic student have much to learn from each other. A balance between generality and specificity is very useful for L2 learning.

Biological Differences

Differences in L2 learning style can also be related to biological factors, such as biorhythms, suste­nance, and location. Biorhythms reveal the times of day when students feel good and perform their best. Some L2 learners are morning people, while others do not want to start learning until the afternoon, and still others are creatures of the evening. Sustenance refers to the need for food or drink while learning. Quite a number of L2 learners feel very comfortable learning with a candy bar, a cup of coffee, but others are distracted from study by food -and drink. Location involves the nature of the environment: temperature, lighting, sound, and even the firmness of the chairs. L2 students differ widely with regard to these environmental factors. The biological aspects of L2 learning style are often forgotten, but vigilant teachers can often make accommodations and compromises when needed.