The relationship between the learning style preferences of undergraduate English preparatory program students, the listening comprehension strategies, and achievement

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the perceptual learningstyle preferences of the undergraduate preparatory program students, the listeningcomprehension strategies and achievement, and to determine whether the perceptual learningstyle preferences, the listening comprehension strategy use and achievement of theparticipants indicate statistically significant differences with regard to gender and thelanguage medium of education after preparatory program.The participants in the sample group of this study were intermediate levelundergraduate preparatory program students at the School of Foreign Languages at DokuzEylül University, Izmir.The data were obtained by four instruments, namely a personal information form, theTurkish version of ?the Perceptual Learning Style Questionnaire (PLSQ)? developed by Reid(1987), translated by Tabanlıoğlu (2003), ?the Listening Comprehension Strategy Inventory(LCSI)? developed by Gerçek (2000), and lastly, ?the Listening Comprehension Test (LCT)?developed by English Language Institute, the University of Michigan (1983).The data analysis conducted by means of frequency, mean, percentage, standarddeviation techniques, t-test, and the Pearson?s product correlation coefficient revealed that themost frequently reported preferences for perceptual learning were related to `auditory? and`tactile? learning styles. On the other hand, the least frequently reported preferences wererelated to `individual learning?, `visual learning? and `group learning? styles. Moreover, whenthe perceptual learning style preferences of the participants were analyzed with regard togender, it was found that female participants have significantly higher perceptual learningstyle scores than their male counterparts.In addition to this, the findings were indicated that the most common behaviors displayed bythe participants were related to `asking for clarification?, `arranging/ planning one?s ownlearning? and `comprehension monitoring? strategies.