Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate cognitive learning style-based reading program on the achievement of Jordanian freshmen English majors. The subjects of the study consisted of 104 freshmen English majors enrolled for Reading Skills 1 in Tafila Technical University in Jordan in the fall semester 2007/2008. Students’ learning styles, analytic and global learning styles, are identified based on Felder and Soloman (2006).
The subjects were divided into two groups and were alternatively exposed to their matching and mismatching analytic and global styles. The instructional programs contained 12 reading passages. The activities that followed these passages were developed in two ways: one for the analytic style students, and the other for the global style students. The reading achievement test was administered twice, at the beginning and at the end of the program, for measuring the students' achievement before and after the experiment. The two-way ANOVA test was performed to measure the interaction effect between the instructional strategy and the cognitive learning style on students’ achievement.
The results revealed that there were no statistically significant differences in the students’ mean scores on the reading achievement test between the analytic learning style group and the global learning style group due to the instructional strategy or the learning style. However, the only factor that affected students’ achievement and motivation for reading in English was the interaction between the instructional strategy and the cognitive learning style. In light of these findings, the researcher offered recommendations for further research and for EFL reading educators.

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