Learning Styles, Cultural Beliefs, and Classroom Activity Preferences : A Study in the Japanese EFL Context

抄録

This paper attempts to reveal learning styles, cultural beliefs, and classroom activity preferences of Japanese students and their relationships in a Japanese EFL context. Understanding learning styles of students has been considered important not only for the teachers but also the students for their better learning. Although many researchers widely investigated each component of learning styles, cultural beliefs, and the relationships between learning styles and cultural beliefs, there is still further research to be done. The present study employed a self-reporting questionnaire to investigate the learning styles, cultural beliefs and classroom activity preferences of Japanese EFL learners. A total of 161 students from two national universities participated in this study The results indicated that (1) the learning style preference of the Japanese EFL students dffer depending on their majors and their reported rating proficiency; (2) two types of cultural beliefs were related with certain learning styles; (3) the preference of classroom activity was not attributable to their cultural beliefs. There are also some pedagogical implications presented in this paper