LEARNING STYLES OF ELT STUDENTS AND THE RELATIONSHIP WITH THEIR ACADEMIC SUCCESS AND LEARNING STYLES

The present study aims to document ELT students' learning style, the relationship between ELT students' learning styles and academic success. The number of students participated in the study was 118; 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th year ELT students from İnönü University and Süleyman Demirel University. A 52-item Turkish Learning Style Survey adapted by Cesur (2008) from Cohen, Oxford and Chi's (2001) Learning Style Survey was used to reveal the students' learning styles. For the academic success the students' cumulative grade point averages were taken into consideration. Turkish ELT students prefer visual, introvert, sequential, synthesizing, deductive and reflective learning styles. However, females and males differ in perceptual style preferences. While females rated higher averages in visual, introvert, sequential, synthesizing, analytical, inductive, deductive, reactional and reflective styles; males rated higher only in terms of extrovert and random. Both genders rated almost the same in terms of audial style. The findings suggest that there is a statistically significant difference between girls' and boys' academic achievement (girls being more successful), and girls' rating higher grades in nine of the learning styles and boys' rating higher grades only in two of the styles account for, albeit to a limited extent, the difference between their academic achievements.