Investigating Students’ Learning Styles and their Impact on Learning EFL Case Study: First Year Students in Assalas Private School

Abstract

The present research is an attempt to investigate the students’ learning styles and their impact in the learning of English as a foreign language in the Assalas private school of Tizi-Ouzou. Our investigation is concerned with the first year learners in secondary school and their teachers. It aims to know if the teachers are aware of these individual differences that exist inside the classroom or not. In order to meet the objectives of the study Visual, Auditory, Reading/Writing and Kinesthetic (VARK) theory about learning styles is applied. For the collecting data, 30 questionnaires were distributed to the learners and 14 classroom observations were conducted with their teachers As far as data analysis is concerned, the mixed-methods combining both qualitative and quantitative methods have been adopted. The quantitative data are analysed using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) and the qualitative ones are analysed using qualitative content analysis (QCA). The results of the study indicate that the highest numbers (57%) of learners are auditory learners. The learners also confirmed that the use of learning styles have positive impact on the learning process. Besides, the findings revealed also that teachers are aware of the learning styles in the EFL classes.