LEARNING STYLES AND COGNITIVE STYLES

A.    INTRODUCTION

            For beginners, there are a confusing excess of labels and style dimension, a shortage of valid and reliable measurement instruments, a confusion in the underlying theory, and the practical implications put forward in the literature.

B.     WHAT ARE LEARNING STYLES?

            Learning styles refer to an “individual’s natural, habitual, and preferred way of absorbing, processing, and retaining new information and skills”. The concept represents a profile of the individual’s approach to learning, a blueprint of the habitual or preferred way the individual perceives, interacts with, and responds to the learning environment. The concept of learning styles offers a “value-neutral approach for understanding individual differences among linguistically and culturally diverse students”. Learning styles correlate more highly than others with desired aspects of language performance in specific settings.

C.    BASIC CONCEPTUAL ISSUES

            Style is a “strategy used consistently across class of tasks and probably has a physiological basis and are fairly fixed for the individual”l. Strategy is used for task- or context-dependent situations, whereas style implies a higher degree of stability falling midway between ability and strategy. The literatures on learning styles uses the terms learning style, cognitive style, personality type, sensory preference, modality, and others rather loosely and often interchangeably.

            The first is cognitive, referring to a stable and internalized dimension related to the way a person thinks or processes information; the second is the level of the learning activity, which is more external and embraces less stable functions that relate to the learner’s a continuing adaptation to the environment.

D.    COGNITIVE STYLES

            Cognitive styles are usually defined as an individual’s preferred and habitual models of perceiving, remembering, organizing, processing, and representing information. There is an unspecified relationship between cognitive styles and cognitive abilities. Cognitive abilities refer to the content and the level of cognition, whereas cognitive styles refer to the manner or mode of cognition. In practical terms, both style and ability affect student task performance, the increase of ability improves task performance for all students, whereas the effect of style depends on the nature of the task.

1.      Problems with the Notion of Cognitive Style

            The main problem has been that the style literature has failed to provide a common conceptual framework for scholars that would have allowed successful communication among them. Cognitive style is still contested whether this style actually exist indicates the ultimate weakness of the concept and therefore its research should be abandoned; it expresses “some of our intuitions about student” and facilitates “appreciation for the divergent approaches to thinking and learning”.

2.      Riding’s System

a.      Wholist-Analytic Style Dimension

            This dimension, determine whether individuals tend to organize information as an integrated whole or in discrete parts of that whole. The typical characteristics of wholists: (a) tend to see a situation as a whole, (b) are able to have an overall perspective, (c) appreciate the total context, (d) are ‘big picture people and consequently, (e) can also easily lose sight of the details.

b.      Verbal-Imagery Style Dimension

            This dimension, determine whether individuals are outgoing and inclined to represent information during thinking verbally or whether they are more inward and tend to think in mental picture or images; in other words, verbalizers are superior at working with verbal information, whereas imagers are better at working with visual or spatial information.    

E.     LEARNING STYLES

1.      Kolb’s Model of Learning Styles

a.      Kolb’s Two Main Dimensions

            Kolb’s learning style construct is based on the permutation of two main dimensions, concrete vs. abstract thinking and active vs. reflective information processing.

b.      Kolb’s Four Basic Learner Types, or Learning Style Patterns

            Four basics learner types:

1)      Divergers (concrete & reflective)

2)      Convergers (abstract & active)

3)      Assimilators (abstract & reflective)

4)      Accommodators (concrete & active)

2.      Assessing Cognitive and Learning Styles

a.      Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory (LSI)

            There was also a significant negative correlation between ‘active’ and ‘reflective information processing’ orientations. On the other hand, there was no substantial intercorrelation between the components associated with the two different dimensions.

b.      Riding’s Cognitive Styles Analysis (CSA)

            CSA focuses on cognitive styles rather than learning styles, which allows it to target a narrower and more precisely definable domain. It utilizes rather test respondent performance directly (computer-based).

F.     COGNITIVE AND LEARNING STYLES IN L2 STUDIES

1.      Research Into Field Dependence-Independence in L2 Studies

            Field independent are better at (a) focusing on some aspects of experience or stimulus, (b) separating it from the background, and (c) analyzing it unaffected by distraction. Field dependents are characterizes by: (a) more responsive, and (b) tend to have a stronger interpersonal orientation and grater alertness.

2.      The Area of Sensory Preferences

            This dimension concerns the perceptual modes or learning channels through which students take in information. Four preference types:

a)      Visual learners (learners absorb information most effectively through ‘visual’)

b)      Auditory learners (by lectures or audiotapes, discussion or group work)

c)      Kinesthetic and tactile learners (body experience and touching learning)

G.    ASSESSING LANGUAGE LEARNING STYLES

1.      Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire and Learning Style Indicator

            PLSPQ involved confirmatory factor analysis and follow-up interviews containing direct and open-ended questions. Because the authors viewed the reduce PLSPQ item pool and their reinterpretation of its internal structure to represents a new instrument, they called it LSI.

2.      Style  Analysis Survey and Learning Style Survey (SAS & LSS)

            The SAS is a user-friendly test, with a self-scoring sheet, explanations about the results, and some practical tips and suggestions. LSS is a further improvement of the SAS. LSS show the following final changes relative to the SAS.

3.      The Ehrman & Leaver (E&L) Construct

            The E&L Construct has only one superordinate style dimension that is provided, with the two poles labeled ectasis and synopsis. The primary difference between the two extremes is that an ectenic learner wants or needs conscious control over the learning process, whereas a synoptic learners more to preconscious or unconscious processing.

4.      Skehan’s Conceptualization of a Learning Style Construct

            Skehan’s cognitive theory of L2 learning and processing is that learners can be characterized by a ‘dual-coding’ approach to language learning and performance, made up of a rule-based system and a memory-based system. Two types learners are proposed by Skehan are analysis-oriented and memory-oriented.

H.    PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

            There the procedure consists of four steps:

1.      Students are invited to a voluntary consultation, aimed at improving learning effectiveness both of those who are having difficulties and those who think they are doing fine.

2.      Once a student has decided to take advantage of this offer, he or she completes a

diagnostic learning style queationnaire.

3.      The third step is the interpretation of the questionnaire results.

The final step is the follow up, whereby a designated Learning Consultant makes sure that the recommendations made during the consultation process are put into practice. Students are then welcome to return for follow-up consultations with a counselor on any emerging issue.

original resource: Suparman, Ujang. 2010. Psycholinguistics: The Theory of Language Acquisition. Bandung: Arfino Raya.