Learning Style and Reading Performance of Grade 8 Students

Abstract

Every student absorbs and processes knowledge in a different way, which distinguishes each from one another. Some students may have a combination of learning styles. In order to apply a variety of teaching strategies that are ideal to accommodate all types of learners in the classroom, it is crucial for a teacher to understand the learning preferences of his or her students. This study was carried out to investigate the students’ learning style and reading performance, and determine if there is a significant correlation between the two variables. The VAT learning style, which stands for visual, auditory, and tactile, was the only focus of this study. This study employs a descriptive-correlational analysis of variables to discover whether there is a significant relationship between the two variables and to describe the variables. There were 72 Grade 8 students from Libertad National High School, Libertad Misamis Oriental, Philippines who participated in this study. The Learning Style Survey Questionnaire was utilized to determine the students' preferred learning styles, and three reading passages with a total of 30-item questions were used to determine the students' reading performance. In this study, the percentage and chi-square test were both employed to obtain the results. The findings indicate that the majority of students’ response is auditory. Regarding their reading performance, most students are at the instructional level. As the p-value of 0.6086 is greater than the 0.05 level of significance, the results showed that the student's learning style is not significantly related to their reading performance. Thus, a student's preferred learning style has no relation to how well they read. This implies that being an auditory learner does not guarantee that a student would excel in reading and become an independent reader. Future studies may thus employ different grade levels or concentrate on the two learning preferences—visual and auditory—to see whether there is a significant relationship between them and the students’ reading proficiency.