Oxford GALA 2003: Language Learning Styles and Strategies Overview

This report, based on research by Rebecca L. Oxford (GALA 2003), provides a comprehensive overview of language learning styles and strategies. It explores how various factors influence second language acquisition (L2), including sensory preferences (auditory, visual, kinesthetic, and tactile), personality types (extraverted vs. introverted, intuitive-random vs. sensing-sequential, closure-oriented/judging vs. open/perceiving, thinking vs. feeling), and the desired degree of generality (holistic/global vs. analytic). The report emphasizes the importance of aligning learning styles with instructional methodologies for optimal learning outcomes, highlighting potential conflicts and harmonies between student preferences and teaching approaches. It discusses the six categories of learning strategies: cognitive, memory-related, metacognitive, affective, compensatory, and social. The report also examines the impact of cultural differences on learning styles and strategies. This report provides a detailed analysis of how different approaches can impact language acquisition.

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LANGUAGE LEARNING STYLES AND STRATEGIES:
AN OVERVIEW
Rebecca L. Oxford, Ph.D.
ABSTRACT
The paper presents various researches performed by the author from various parts of world on the
various factors that affect the language learning styles like the general approaches towards learning any
language and learning strategies where the specific behavior or thoughts of the learners are utilized for
enhancing the language learning. The ability of the student towards learning in the particular
instructional framework is seen to be influenced by these factors.
INTRODUCTION
The critical factors that are seen to determine how and how well the students are able to
learn the foreign or the second language influence the language learning styles and strategies.
When a language is the primary source of communication and an abundant input is seen to
exist in that particular language, a second language is used in that particular setting. Whereas,
the settings where input in a certain language is restricted and not used as a primary means of
conveying our thoughts, a foreign language is used. Therefore, the study uses the term “L2” in
order to refer to the foreign or the second language. The readers of the study would use
English as their foreign or second language (EFL or ESL) and almost every chapter present in
this study was conducted either in EFL or ESL settings.
Some of the studies used while conducting this paper was seen to include the native English
speakers who learnt Japanese, German, French and other foreign language. All the styles and
strategies that have been mentioned in the study can be used irrespective of the first language.
The general approaches like the auditory or visual, global or analytic etc. that can be used by

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the student in order to acquire a new language or any other subjects are termed as the learning
styles. Cornett (1983, p. 9) has defined these styles as the overall patterns which provide a
general direction towards the learning behavior. Similarly, Dunn & Griggs (1988, p. 3, has
suggested that learning style can be termed as the biologically and developmentally imposed set
of characteristics which are helpful in making the method of teaching a wonderful experience for
many whereas also accounts for making it terrible for others. The paper will review various
aspects related to the learning styles like desired degree of generality, sensory preferences,
biological differences and personality styles.
Whereas the specific behaviour, actions, techniques or steps like giving oneself an encouragement
for tackling any difficult task related to language which is used by the students for enhancing their
own learning is termed as the language strategies (Scarcella & Oxford, 1992, p. 63). The
strategies must be fit into the learning styles of the learners and chosen consciously by them.
Whereas for the L2 task, these strategies would be considered as a useful toolkit for conscious,
active and purposeful self-regulation of learning. There are six categories of the learning
strategies ranging from cognitive, memory-related, metacognitive, affective, compensatory, and
social. All these strategies are discussed thoroughly in the paper. As this particular section
provides thorough help to the instructional methodology book therefore is highlights the learning
strategies and styles of the students and how it can perform functions with the given instructional
methodology. This paper emphasizes on the learning styles and strategies of the students who
can work with the instructional methodology and even contradict to emphasize that learning
styles and strategies of individual students can work together with – or conflict with – a given
instructional methodology. In case a harmony was found between the students in terms of their
preferences and learning styles and the instructional methodology and material is combined
If there is harmony between (a) the student (in terms of style and strategy preferences) and (b)
the combination of instructional material and its methodology, this will assist in helping the

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students to perform well and to experience lower level of anxiety. In case of any discrepancies
or clashes between (a) and (b), then the students are seen to perform with a poor outcome and
experience lower level of confidence with high stress and anxiety. This might be harmful for
the relationship between teacher and students leading to increased conflicts. The students might
be give an outright rejection towards the methodology of the teacher and the subject matter.
The next part of the study will discuss various other learning styles.
Learning Styles
There are 9 major style dimensions provided by Ehrman and Oxford (1990) which are relevant to
the L2 learning. However, various other learning styles aspects are also seen to be highly
influential. The chapter presented will discuss four primary learning styles which will strongly be
associated with the L2 learning namely, personality types, sensory preferences, desired degree of
generality, and biological differences.
According to various studies, the learning styles will not be dichotomous in nature (black or
white, present or absent). These learning styles are operated on the continuum or intersecting and
multiple continua. This can be explained by giving an example of an individual who is more
extraverted as compared to introverted, or equally visual and auditory and/or more closure-
oriented than open, but might have lesser tactile and kinesthetic involvement. (Prabhu, N. S.,
1987).
Sensory Preferences
The sensory preferences encompasses four main arenas namely, auditory, visual, kinesthetic
(movement-oriented), and tactile (touch-oriented). These preferences are referred to as the
perceptual, physical learning channels and create a comfortable environment for the students. The
visual students would enjoy the process of reading and can obtain a large amount of information
on visual simulation. It has been identified that the learning procedure without any oral direction

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or conversation might become highly confusing and give zero result for these students. Whereas
the auditory students are seen to find learning comfortable even without the visual input. These
kind of students are able to enjoy and even profit from the unembellished conversation, lectures
and oral directions. These students enjoy the classroom interactions and similar activities along
with engaging in the role-play. Whereas, a large amount of movement and enjoyment with the
collage, tangible objects and flashcard is seen with the kinesthetic and tactile students. These
students are seen to take considerable amount of breaks and move from one place to another and
cannot sit at their desk for a long period of time.
It was demonstrated by Reid (1987) that all the ESL students have varying degree of sensory
preferences, and some people from particular culture are seen to favour various modalities
towards the learning procedure. This can be explained by giving the example of students coming
from Asian culture and were seen to be highly visual and amongst them the Koreans were the
most visual of all. Various studies like Reid explained that Hispanic learners are highly auditory
in nature and it was also observed by Reid that Japanese are highly non-auditory in nature. The
ESL students coming from various cultures were observed to be highly tactile and kinesthetic in
their sensory preferences (Reid, 1995).
Personality Types
Personality style is another style which consists of four important strands namely; intuitive-
random vs. sensing-sequential; thinking vs. feeling; extraverted vs. introverted; and closure-
oriented/judging vs. open/perceiving. The personality type is also known as psychological type is
basically a construct on the basis of work presented by psychologist Carl Jung. A considerable
relationship was found between the L2 proficiency and personality type in the native-English-
speaking learners of foreign languages (Ehrman, 1989; Oxford, 1990).

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Extraverted vs. Introverted.
The extraverts are seen to gain their energy from the external world and interact with the people
on daily basis. These people tend to have many friends whereas the introverts are seen to derive
their energy from internal world, love seeking solitude and have fewer friends. Only a teacher
can make these two work together. In the L2 classroom, the teachers can keep the enthusiasm of
extraverts to a manageable level by enforcing the time limits. The introverts are provided with
the opportunity of participating with the extraverts when the person in charge is rotated shift
wise.
Intuitive-Random vs. Sensing-Sequential
The intuitive-random students are seen to think in a futuristic, abstract, large scale and non-
sequential manner. These kind of people believe in creating new possibilities and theories which
have sudden insights and even prefer guiding people about their learning. Contrastingly, the
sensing-sequential learners are seen to be highly grounded and even like facts instead of focusing
on theories, they always look for consistency and want specific instructions and guidance from
the teacher. In order to teacher both the sensing-sequential and intuitive-random learners is to
provide them with plethora of choices and offer them variety. This can be done by having an
organized structure for the sensing-sequential learners and providing enrichment activities and
multiple options for the intuitive-random students.
Closure-oriented/Judging vs. Open/Perceiving
The closure-oriented students are seen to reach towards the judgment and completion as soon as
possible and want to clarify doubts as soon as possible. These types of learners are believed to be
highly serious and hardworking and like to be given work with strict deadlines and written
information. But according to the Ehrman & Oxford (1989), their desire towards the closure is
seen to be hampered by the development of their fluency. Whereas in terms of the perceiving and

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open learners, they are open towards the ideas of new perceptions. These learners are seen to take
the L2 learning less seriously and take all their work tasks as game that has to be enjoyed instead
of considering as the set of tasks. These learners are seen to dislike their deadlines and always
look towards having a good time. These type of learners are seem to soak up the information
provided to then by osmosis instead of working towards hard efforts.
While developing the fluency, the open learners are seen to perform better as compared to the
closure-oriented learners (Ehrman & Oxford, 1989) however, these students are always at the
disadvantage when taught in the traditional classroom setting. In the L2 classroom, a good
balance must be required for the closure-oriented and open learners. The closure oriented are
highly task-driven in nature whereas the latter one know how to have fun. As these learners can
benefit from each other when collaborated together, the skilled L2 teachers must create
cooperative groups.
Thinking vs. Feeling
The thinking learners are highly rigid and are constantly oriented to the stark truth even when
their decision is seen to hurt the feelings of others. These people are viewed as highly competent
and do not even offer any kind of praise easily. These type of learners also seen detached
sometimes. Contrastingly, the other ones, the feelings learners are seen to value other individual
in the best way possible. These type of learners are empathetic and compassionate towards the
words and behavior of people and also say things to which are required to smooth over various
other difficult situations. These people want to be respected for the contributions made by them
and are often seen to wear their heart on their sleeves. These types of people must be paired up
with the thinking learners so as to lower down their emotional expression while performing their
tasks and the thinking learners might learn to show their feelings.

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Desired Degree of Generality
This type of classification presents a differentiation between the learners who are seen to
concentrate on the minute details as compared to the ones who focus on the big picture or the
main idea. The holistic or global students are seen to be high interactive and like communicative
events and are specific towards emphasizing on the main idea along with avoiding the analysis of
minute details. These type of learners are not bothered by the incomplete information and guess
things from the prior context. Whereas, the analytic students always concentrate on the minute
details and are seen to avoid the free-flowing communicative activities. As they are highly
concerned about the precision, the analytic learners are seen not to take any risks which is related
to guessing from the context and only consider when there are high chances that the guesses are
accurate. Both of these categories can learn a lot from each other and a balance has to be
maintained between generality and specificity in L2 learning.
Biological Differences
The biological differences are one of the factor that affect the difference in the L2 learning styles
which include the factors like location, sustenance and biorhythms. The factor of location
involves environment ranging from lighting, temperature, firmness of chairs, sound etc. and are
seen to affect the L2 students. Biorhythms are seen to reveal the specific duration of the day when
students are seen to feel good and perform better. Some of the learner of L2 are morning people
whereas some prefer afternoon learning. In terms of the sustenance, the food and drinking habits
of the learners are perceived and evaluated. Some like studying with food or a cup of coffee
whereas some are distracted by even the idea of food or drink.
Beyond the Stylistic Comfort Zone
There is a need for the L2 learners to make priority of their style preferences. In some occasions,
there is a need to extend themselves beyond their particular style and therefore the teachers are
required to provide a plethora of classroom activities in order to cater to the various learning

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styles. It is the responsibility of the teachers to help their L2 students to develop their skills
beyond their specific comfort zone. The comfort zones of the people is usually dictated by the
style preferred by them. The teachers should systematically offer various activities within the
communicative approach and learner-centered.
Assessing L2 Learning Style
One of the easiest method for assessing the L2 learning styles is the written surveys. In these
surveys, the students are seen to answer the questions in a manner that their respective style
preference is revealed. Although these style surveys are seen to vary in validity and reliability but
are helpful in providing data which helps to understand the varying L2 styles. After discussing
the various dimensions of the L2 learning styles, we need to focus on the various learning
strategies that are highly related to the learning styles.
Learning Strategies
The L2 strategies can be defined as the behavior or thought process which is highly specific
towards enhancing their own L2 learning. The term strategy is derived from the Greek word
strategia, meaning the actions or steps that are taken so as to win a war. However, with the
passage of the time, the goal-directedness and control are closely related to the word (Oxford,
1990).
The strategy can never be termed as good or bad but it is considered to be highly neutral to the
context where it is being used. Now the question as to what makes any strategy positive as well as
helpful for the learners arrives. A strategy can only be termed as useful in case the following
conditions are met:
1. The strategy is closely relating to the L2 tasks at hand.
2. The strategy is fitting to the learning style preferences of the students to one degree or the
another

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3. The strategy is being employed effectively by the students and is linked with various other
strategies.
When the strategies are able to fulfill the conditions, they make learning faster, enjoyable, easier,
self-directed, transferable and effective towards the new situations (Oxford, 1990, p. 8). These
learning strategies are also able to make the students highly autonomous, independent and
lifelong learners (Allwright, 1990; Little, 1991).
However, various students are not aware of the power of consciously using L2 learning strategies
in order to make the process of learning quicker and more effective in nature (Nyikos & Oxford,
1993). When the teachers are highly skilled, they help the students to develop an awareness
among the children and learners regarding the learning strategies and enabling them to use
plethora of strategies appropriate to them.
Strategy used are often related to the style preferences
The students are seen to use various learning strategies reflecting their basic
learning styles when they were seen to perform functions on their own or forced by the
teacher to do the lesson on their own (Ehrman & Oxford, 1989). The learning styles of the
learners are seen to activate or stretch by the teachers when the various strategies that are
tried which are outside their basic style preference. For this, they need have a straight
instruction on usage of strategies. (Andrew, D. C., 1998).
Conscious Movement toward Goals
According to Pressley and McCormick (1995), the learning strategies are seen to be used
intentionally and controlled consciously by the learner. The definition of the strategies are seen to
imply the various conscious movement towards their language objectives (Oxford, 1990, 1996a).
By taking the example of Divna, who aims to conduct a thorough research in chemistry using
the various articles that are listed in L2. She does not have extra time for reading the articles

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and journals and is a busy professionals, however she requires all the relevant information
contained in the paper. In order to meet her needs, she has been performing a manageable task
of finding and then reading an L2 article once in a week. She has been performing the task with
a rapid reading rate. This helps her to identify with and to understand all the published research
findings. Divna can use various strategies for helping her to accomplish her task which
includes scheduling the time every week in order to search an article in Internet or library. This
prepares her to prepare herself by glancing over all the articles on her research topics in her
basic language (Zimmerman, B. J., Boekarts, M., Pintrich, P. R., & Zeidner, M., 2000).
Additionally, Divna has been using strategies like reading carefully with supporting details,
skimming for assessing the main points, using the dictionary to understand all the difficult
words, writing an outline or summary whenever required and keeping a notebook for L2
scientific vocabulary. Therefore, a series of interlocking, relation and mutually supportive the
strategies and a well-orchestrated set of strategies that is used by Divna is termed as the
strategy chain.
Positive Outcomes from Strategy Use
The achievement and proficiency of the students while reading the subjects areas outside the L2
learnings demonstrates the use of learning strategies (Pressley & Associates, 1990). The previous
researches have previously demonstrated this relationship which range from social studies to
science and from physics to reading. Various studies have associated the learning strategy use
along with the positive learning outcomes, and concluded that the students who employ
themselves in the learning strategies are seen to enjoy high level of self-efficacy and have a
perception of being an effective learner (Zimmerman & Pons, 1986). Various researches like
Naiman, Fröhlich, Stern, & Todesco (1975) belong to the good language learners in the L2 arena
and are seen to determine the specific learning strategies that are being used by some learners like
guessing meaning from the context. However, in the later studies it was seen that one cannot use a

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single set of strategies in order to become good language learners.
Those studies found that less able learners used strategies in a random, unconnected, and
uncontrolled manner (Abraham & Vann, 1987), while more effective learners showed careful
orchestration of strategies, targeted in a relevant, systematic way at specific L2 tasks. Nunan
(1991) investigated that the more effective learners can be differentiated from the less effective
ones as they have greater ability to reflect on and articulating their own language learning process.
In Puerto Rico, a study of learners of English demonstrated that the successful students were
using strategies and were actively involved as compared to the less successful learners (Green and
Oxford, 1995). According to Green and Oxford (1995), the number and the type of learning
strategies were seen to vary as per the foreign language environment or a second language setting
of the learners. The same researchers discovered that the second language learners are seen to
have been employing larger number of strategies and with higher frequency as compared to the
foreign language learners.
Strategy Instruction Research
In order to increase the proficiency in L2, most of the teachers and researchers are seen to provide
a thorough instruction which help the students to learn various relevant and powerful learning
strategies. According to various studies related to ESL/EFL, the affirmative effects of the strategy
instructions are seen to emerged for reading proficiency (Park-Oh, 1994), speaking proficiency
(Dadour & Robbins, 1996; O’Malley, Chamot, Stewner-Manzanares, Küpper, & Russo, 1985),
however for the case of listening, the results were not seen to be significant (O’Malley et al.,
1985). The effects of the strategy instructions were investigated by Cohen et al. (1995), and
Cohen and Weaver (1998) among the native-English-speaking learners of the foreign languages.
They demonstrated positive results which were seen to be mixed with neutral findings. However,
according to Chamot et al. (1996), greater strategy use along with self-efficacy is seen among the
native-English-speaking learners of foreign languages. Similarly, Nunan, (1997) demonstrated

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that the strategy instruction was seen to increase the EFL learning motivation.
In order to instruct the effective strategy the learners must be demonstrated the cases when the
strategy can be considered useful, how to use and its proper evaluation. Further, how it can be
transferred to other situation and tasks must also be taught to them. According to Oxford &
Leaver (1996), in everyday L2 teaching, the best way is to deliver beneficial strategy instruction
and weave it together with various other strategy instructions.