The relationship between learning style preferences and academic achievement of English majors at al-Aqsa University in Gaza, Palestine

• Main Authors: Abu Sharbain, Islam H. A., Tan, Kok Eng, Jhaish, Mohammed
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: LB2300 Higher Education
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/1990/1/LLL_-_T4_-_17.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/1990/; http://3linc.uum.edu.my/
• Institution: Universiti Utara Malaysia

This study aims to investigate the relationship between the learning style preferences, and academic achievement of third year English majors at Al Aqsa University in Gaza, Palestine. A total of 60 students were asked to complete a questionnaire to identify their perceptual learning style preferences. In addition, an achievement test was held to determine the students' academic level in English and the results were correlated with the learning style preferences. The findings showed that the top two learning styles preferred were kinesthetic, 90.27% and tactile learning 82.27% respectively. The other learning styles preferred in decreasing popularity were the group learning style 79.80%, visual style 78.80%, auditory style 78.60% and individual learners 54.73%. Moreover, there were statistically significant differences between males and females in visual, auditory, individual learning, and group learning, and there were no statistically significant differences between males and females in kinaesthetic and tactile. Furthermore, there was a significant correlation between achievement and auditory style, but there was no significant correlation between achievement and visual, kinaesthaetic, tactile, group learning, and individual learning. The paper ends with a discussion of some pedagogical implications of the findings on tertiary education in the local context.