The Effect of Gender and Learning Styles on L2 Learners’ Writing Performance at Higher Education

Abstract

The study attempted to measure the interaction effects of gender and learning styles toward writing performance. This study applied expost facto research design using questionnaire and test as instruments. The participants were 80 learners at IAIN Palangka Raya of 2019/ 2020 academic year consisting of 38 males and 42 females; 23 visual, 33 auditory, and 24 kinesthetic learners. A two way Anova test was implemented to analyze data. The analysis confirmed that gender (F= 5.248, p= 0.025), and learning styles (F= 8.722; p=0.000) contributed to give effect on writing performance. The study revealed that female was higher than male; and the visual learners got the highest score, followed by auditory and kinesthetic learners in their writing performance. On the contrary, between gender and learning styles (F=0.036, p= 0.956> 0.05 gave no interaction effect simultaneously on writing performance. It was suggested that lecturers provide the class appropriately to facilitate a variety of learning styles of learners. Further studies on learning styles with wider sample size in writing class was recommended.