Relationship among perceptual learning styles, productive vocabulary, and textbooks in English as a foreign language learning stars

Abstract

Perceptual learning styles have been widely investigated in English as a Foreign Language (EFL). However, less attention has been paid to productive vocabulary and the perceptual activities and words included in English Language Teaching (ELT) textbooks. To our knowledge, the relation among these variables (perceptual learning styles, productive vocabulary, and perceptual activities and vocabulary) has not been studied yet. Therefore, the present doctoral dissertation aims at contributing to narrow this gap in the studies examining perceptual learning styles, productive vocabulary knowledge (controlled productive vocabulary and lexical production/association), and the perceptual activities and vocabulary provided in two ELT textbooks, as well as the relationship among those variables. For this purpose, a total sample of 60 Spanish EFL learners participated in this investigation. They were enrolled in the second year of non-compulsory secondary education, which is equivalent to the 12th grade, in a public high school in the autonomous community of La Rioja (Spain). 29 students out of 60 were enrolled in a Collaboration Program with the Official School of Languages, whereas the remaining 31 students were enrolled in English as a curricular subject. As for the data collection instruments, the Learning Style Survey (Cohen et al., 2009) was administered to the learners to assess their perceptual learning style preferences (visual, auditory, and tactile/kinesthetic). The 2,000-word frequency level (version A+C) of the Productive Vocabulary Levels Test (Laufer & Nation, 1995, 1999) was used to measure their controlled productive vocabulary knowledge. Moreover, a lexical availability task which consisted of two traditional prompts (‘Town’ and ‘Hobbies’) and six novel prompts related to each perceptual learning style (‘Look.’ ‘Move,’ ‘Say,’ ‘Soft,’ ‘Loud,’ and ‘Bright’) investigated their lexical production. We also analyzed the perceptual activities and the perceptual vocabulary included in the two ELT textbooks the informants used for their EFL classes: English File (Collaboration Program with the Official School of Languages) and Out & About 2 (English as a curricular subject). The findings of the present investigation revealed that visual was the informants’ major perceptual learning style preference, whilst auditory was the least favored. A statistically significant relationship could not be found among perceptual learning styles and the two dimensions of productive vocabulary analyzed in this dissertation: controlled productive vocabulary and lexical production/association through a lexical availability task. Concerning ELT textbooks, English File adapted better to the perceptual learning styles of the informants enrolled in the Collaboration Program with the Official School of Languages. However, the perceptual learning style preferences of these informants and the students enrolled in English as a curricular subject were not equally distributed in their respective textbooks. There were more perceptual words in English File than in Out & About 2, being tactile/kinesthetic the predominant perceptual words in isolation or the combination of visual and tactile/kinesthetic, when considering multimodal words. A higher number of perceptual activities was encountered in English File, being visual and tactile/kinesthetic the most and least represented. At least 80 per cent of the words produced in the six perceptual prompts of the lexical availability task were also included in the two ELT textbooks. Therefore, they had an impact on the lexical production of the informants of this study.