Dr. Zahra Moharrer, Malaysia
To pursue the progression of electronic learning worldwide, some prominent universities in Iran have established online learning courses or programs. However, for EFL students who have been educated mainly in face-to-face (FTF) traditional classrooms, it is crucial to beequipped with appropriate awareness on how to fine-tune their learning style preferences to cope with the problems that may arise in the absence of teachers. The instruments for data collection were a demographic questionnaire, Willing’s (1988) Learning Style Model ‘How Do You Learn Best?’, and an achievement test based on the English course. In this study, a total of 236 high school seniors were selected from a computer-based and three FTF schools in Shiraz, Iran to investigate the trends in the students’ preferences in two different modes of teaching and learning contexts. The items of the learning style model were confirmed via Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). Findings showed that in the computer-based learning (CBL), students had a tendency to apply concrete, authority-oriented, analytical and communicative learning styles. On the contrary, the FTF students preferred communicative, authority-oriented, concrete and analytical learning styles. The other results revealed that learning style preferences had no effect on achievement scores in both of the groups: CBL and FTF. On the basis of the findings, theoretical and practical implications would be discussed.
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The International Conference on Current Issues of Languages, Dialects and Linguistics (WWW.LLLD.IR), 2-3 February 2017, Iran-Ahwaz.
