An Investigation of Chinese Students’ Learning Styles at an English-medium University in Mainland China

Abstract

This paper reports on an investigation of Chinese tertiary students’ perceptual learning styles at an English-medium university in mainland China. Results revealed that 1) a wide variety of learning styles was distributed among Chinese EFL students, a majority of them favoring tactile, kinesthetic, and visual learning styles; 2) gender differences existed but were not statistically significant in the learning-style preferences between male and female students; 3) English majors and Non-English majors showed statistically significant differences in their tactile learning and kinesthetic learning; 4) English majors differed significantly from Non-English majors in their tactile learning and kinesthetic learning; 5) postgraduates and undergraduates were significantly different in their preferences for auditory learning and individual learning. These results provided insightful implications for tertiary English teaching in China.