Learning styles and reading strategies of esp students

Abstract

Success in an ESP class can be determined by a number of factors that areassociated with the learners` characteristics, such as learning preferences,educational background and personality features, the teacher`s teaching styleand the educational context. This paper focuses on the relationship betweenlearning styles and reading strategies and how they relate to students` readingperformance in four intact ESP classes for Exact Sciences students. Thisassociation is examined by means of a biographical questionnaire, the SILL andSAS surveys and retrospective accounts of a reading comprehension task Descriptive statistics include frequencies and measures of central tendencywhich serve as the basis for data analysis. Results indicate a generalpreference for visual, extroverted and closure-oriented styles as well as forcompensation, metacognitive and cognitive strategies, where successfulstudents show a medium to high level of strategy use. Students havingdifficulties in reading comprehension are characterized by a distinct and lowerlevel of strategy use, especially of cognitive strategies. The benefits of versatileteaching approaches are mentioned because they cater for learner`s diversityand success in future learning situations. Further research in the area shouldpoint towards aspects such as proficiency gain and motivation, whichundoubtedly influence strategy selection and use.