Does flipped learning affect language skills and learning styles differently?

Abstract

In recent years, educators have started to use innovative pedagogies in response to the changing trends of language learning towards developing great proficiency, as the conventional approaches could no longer improve proficiency due to the interactive nature of language skills. Therefore, it is believed that the Flipped Learning (FL) approach, as one of these new pedagogies, can be appropriately used to enhance language skills due to its hybrid nature. On the other hand, the existing literature on the efficacy of the FL approach has mostly ignored psychological factors like motivation, personality traits, and learning styles. Thus, the current study aimed to see which learning styles fitted better in the FL approach. Further, it intended to explore which language skill and in which learning style the amount of improvement could be significant. Forty Iranian EFL learners took the PET pre-test and were divided into their preferred learning styles. Then, they underwent the FL approach for a semester. The results of the paired samples T-Test indicated a significant positive improvement in the students’ performance in the post-test (t (39) = −7.698, p = .000). The results of the One-way ANOVA showed that there were significant differences among learning style groups in favor of the visual style, (F (4, 35) = 2.299, p = .034), and Mixed ANOVA results indicated that the most significant difference among skills was found between speaking and writing skills, (F (3, 105) = 8.018, p = .000).