EFFECTS OF THE TEACHERS’ ACCOMODATION TO ULIS FRESHMEN’S LEARNING STYLES ON THEIR ATTENTION IN ENGLISH SPEAKING AND LISTENING CLASSES

Abstract

Students’ classroom attention could be affected by various factors and one of them might be teacher’s accommodation to students’ learning styles. This issue has encouraged the researcher to carry out the present paper. It is aimed at answering three research questions: (1) what are ULIS freshmen’s learning styles? (2) To what extent the teacher’s teaching techniques could cater for ULIS freshmen’s learning styles (3) What are the effects of the teacher’s teaching techniques on the attention of ULIS freshmen with different learning styles. Additionally, pedagogical suggestions were offered in the hope of improving English language teaching. The research was accomplished with the participation of 27 ULIS freshmen and their teacher. They provided useful information through three data collection methods of questionnaires, interviews and classroom observations. The results revealed that auditory and kinesthetic were the most popular major learning styles while visual was the most prevalent minor learning style among the students. Their teacher was highly aware of her students’ differences in preferred ways of learning; however her teaching techniques mainly matched auditory learning style, not visual and kinesthetic learning style. The lack of planning time, facilities and materials were responsible for this. More significantly, the teacher’s teaching techniques did have considerable effects on the attention of the students with different learning styles. The activities that catered for the students’ learning styles could help to maintain their attention whereas the mismatch between learning styles and teaching techniques led to the students’ off-task behaviors. Thus, more attention should be paid to this issue. Education administrators should help teachers foster their awareness of students’ learning styles through organizing seminars and conferences. Teachers also need to be provided with enough teaching facilities as well as materials. Besides, they could use learning style questionnaires to identify their students’ learning styles and consult available materials on the internet or in reference books.