Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON EDUCATION SCIENCES AND LEARNING TECHNOLOGY, Sarajevo, Bosna-Hersek, 6 - 10 Kasım 2019, ss.2
Learning styles may be defined as the way individuals prefer to process and remember information. Research in this area has shown that that there are three main types of learning styles: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic/tactile. Visual learners learn by studying charts, graphs, and pictures; auditory learners remember information by listening and speaking, and kinesthetic/tactile learners tend to retain information through hands- on learning such as building models or doing laboratory experiments (Abozeid, Atwa, and Fouad, 2016). The aim of this study is to explore whether Turkish students studying English as a foreign language (EFL) at the preparatory school of a state university have a dominant learning style or not, and to compare the learning styles of students in 2006 with the students from the same educational context in 2019. The Barsch Learning Style Inventory (1991) was used to evaluate the learning styles of 39 intermediate level students. The results of the data analysis showed that the visual learning style was the most prevalent style among the students in 2006 and in 2019, although there was a drop in this style and an increase in the auditory and kinesthetic learning styles in 2019. The study also revealed that there were mostly similarities between style preferences in 2006 and 2019 in terms of the order of styles. However, a significant increase in the level of auditory learning styles was also observed. Based on these findings, it may be beneficial to focus on sensory and auditory materials as part of the regular classroom practice.