Rao Zhenhui
rzhthm@public.nc.jx.cn
Foreign Languages College, Jiangxi Normal University (Nanchang, China)

Examples of Mismatches Between Teaching and Learning Styles

Liu Hong, a third-year English major in Jiangxi Normal University, China, was in David's office again. After failing David's oral English course the previous year, Liu Hong had reenrolled, hoping to pass it this year. Unfortunately, things were not looking promising so far, and she was frustrated. When David asked why she was so unhappy in his class, she said: "I am an introverted, analytic and reflective student. I don't know how to cope with your extroverted, global and impulsive teaching style?"

Jenny, an American teacher from California, sat in Dean's office again, feeling perplexed by the students' negative responses to her kinesthetic and global styles of teaching. Despite Jenny's persistent efforts to convince the students of the advantages of her teaching styles, she was told by her Vietnamese colleagues that her attempts were in opposition to the prevalent teaching styles in Vietnam. Jenny had specialized in applied linguistics for a long time and was well trained in the TESOL area in U.S.A. But all of a sudden, it seemed that all her teaching competence and experience had become useless in such a country where she had never been before.

Analyzing the Examples

The above statements are representative of serious mismatches between the learning styles of students and the teaching style of the instructor. In a class where such a mismatch occurs, the students tend to be bored and inattentive, do poorly on tests, get discouraged about the course, and may conclude that they are not good at the subjects of the course and give up (Oxford et al, 1991). Instructors, confronted by low test grades, may become overtly critical of their students or begin to question their own competence as teachers, as exemplified by the Jenny's case above.

To reduce teacher-student style conflicts, some researchers in the area of learning styles advocate teaching and learning styles be matched (e.g. Griggs & Dunn, 1984; Smith & Renzulli, 1984; Charkins et al, 1985), especially in foreign language instruction (e.g. Oxford et al, 1991; Wallace & Oxford, 1992). Kumaravadivelu (1991:98) states that: "... the narrower the gap between teacher intention and learner interpretation, the greater are the chances of achieving desired learning outcomes". There are many indications (e.g. Van Lier, 1996; Breen, 1998) that bridging the gap between teachers' and learners' perceptions plays an important role in enabling students to maximize their classroom experience.

Purpose of this Article

This article describes ways to make this matching feasible in real-life classroom teaching in East Asian and comparable contexts. The assumption underlying the approach taken here is that the way we teach should be adapted to the way learners from a particular community learn. But before exploring how the teaching styles and learning styles can be matched, let us first examine traditional East Asian students' learning style preferences in dealing with language learning tasks.

Traditional East Asian Learning Styles

Traditionally, the teaching of EFL in most East Asian countries is dominated by a teacher-centered, book-centered, grammar-translation method and an emphasis on rote memory (Liu & Littlewood, 1997). These traditional language teaching approaches have resulted in a number of typical learning styles in East Asian countries, with introverted learning being one of them. In East Asia, most students see knowledge as something to be transmitted by the teacher rather than discovered by the learners. They, therefore, find it normal to engage in modes of learning which are teacher-centered and in which they receive knowledge rather than interpret it. According to Harshbarger el al (1986), Japanese and Korean students are often quiet, shy and reticent in language classrooms. They dislike public touch and overt displays of opinions or emotions, indicating a reserve that is the hallmark of introverts. Chinese students likewise name "listening to teacher "as their most frequent activity in senior school English classes (Liu & Littlewood, 1997). All these claims are confirmed by a study conducted by Sato (1982), in which she compared the participation of Asian students in the classroom interaction with that of non-Asian students. Sato found that the Asians took significant fewer speaking turns than did their non-Asian classmates (36.5% as opposed to 63.5%).

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