The Relationship between Perceptual Learning Styles and Language Learners’ Success in Reading Tests

Learning and teaching styles in learning and teaching foreign languages are two interrelated areas. A study in one of these fields sheds light on the other. Therefore, interest in how people learn and how they prefer learning has increased over the years due to an extensive amount of literature available pertaining to both learning styles and teaching styles. Thus, this research is grounded in clarifying the relationship between ENG 101 1 students’ preferred perceptual learning styles and their success in a reading test. In this regard, this paper is concerned with identifying the preferred perceptual learning styles of university students (N= 154) considering their age, gender and countries to determine if relationships exist between students’ success in an IELTS reading test and preferred perceptual learning style. This study is significant as the number of studies based on examining the relationships between success in reading skills and perceptual learning styles is limited. Data were gathered from Reid’s PLSPQ to determine the focused participants’ preferred perceptual learning styles and an IELTS reading test to investigate the relationship between individuals’ preferred perceptual learning styles and their success in the reading test. In the analysis of the data, a t-test and ANOVA were applied. Thus, this survey is both qualitative and quantitative. The * Öğr. Gör. Uluslararası Kıbrıs Üniversitesi, Yabancı Diller Yoksekokulu. safiyec@ciu.edu.tr

Therefore, this issue has become considerably one of topical subjects for language teachers regarding how to improve students' success in reading comprehension tasks and they have precisely inspected what may affect language learners in the classroom in order to be able to overcome problems that may arise and provide dilemma for both teachers and students as well.

literature review
Interest in Learning Styles in SLA: Various studies have been conducted to determine good characteristics of language learners to be able to enhance students' academic success and also to enhance the quality of teaching in the classrooms since 1970s. Therefore, learning style has considerably taken interest since identifying and discussing the styles used by good language learners were considered as utterly beneficial in elucidating 'how they learn' and unsurprisingly, this interest has extended in the field of SLA. Regarding to this interest, Behabadi & Behfrouz (2013) claim that knowledge of the characteristics of a good language learner can guide learners in assisting them to enhance their language learning efficiency and providing the language teachers a vehicle to help the poor L2 learners to enhance their success. Thus, the significance of identifying preferred learning styles and preferred teaching styles have been proclaimed by many researchers. To allude to this significance, Claxton & Ralson (1978: 36) assert that the research findings on learning styles provide substantial benefits to teachers, counsellors, and the students themselves in terms of finding better ways for students to learn. Moreover, they claim that matching learning styles with teaching styles promotes learning as well as facilitates positive interpersonal relations, whereas identifying and defining excessive number of learning styles can become an enormous mission.
Many points of views about learning styles take place in the literature. For instance, Reid (1995) gives credence to learning style as "an individual's natural, habitual, and preferred way(s) of absorbing, processing, and retaining new information and skills". Similar to what Reid asserts, Willing (1993: 9) alludes that learning style refers to "any individual learner's natural, habitual, and preferred ways of learning". According to Cornett learning style is "a consistent pattern of behaviour but with a certain range of individual variability". Moreover, Hunter (1979: 27) advocates that learning style "describes a student in terms of those educational conditions under which he is most likely to learn. Learning style describes how a student learns, not what he has learned" Erginer (2014). claims that learning style is a conceptual structure that is based on the preference of individual's learning. According to the researcher learning style is like a tool for achieving our goals and that tool is changeable in accordance to individuals' preferences. Therefore, it is suggested that the teachers have an important role in identifying learning styles and trying to match them with an appropriate teaching style in order to facilitate learning.
As individuals' preferred learning styles are utterly important and they have a significant role in learning foreign language, teaching styles are crucial, too. Therefore, researchers have focussed on teaching styles for improving learning since they are closely interrelated: consequently, according to above given reasons there are excessive number of views towards teaching styles and they become an enormous task for enhancing learning. Regarding to those fruitful evidences teachers should not be inclined to teach in ways that are consistent with their own learning styles. Hence, it is obvious that this situation causes a handicap for some students whose preferred learning styles do not correspond to their teacher's teaching style: consequently, according to these researchers, the teachers can overcome this problem by using a variety of techniques for delivering instruction. It means that teachers can apply a variety of teaching styles, multi-sensory teaching aids, learning centres where all students can benefit for learning material in a variety of ways and students can be taught to use other learning styles and so forth. When all teachers keep in their minds the above tips, they can maximize learning, provide all students with the chance to use their own perceptual learning preferences as well as provide the opportunity to those students to be more successful in foreign language learning.

Correlational studies based on perceptual learning styles and students' academic success
There are various studies that are germane to perceptual learning styles and teaching styles as well as a match between the two in relation to course grades and final exam results. Many researchers have proclaimed the significance of identifying both preferred learning styles and preferred teaching styles. In promoting their ambition, they have tried to determine whether teachers' preferred teaching styles and students' preferred learning styles exist or not; to determine if there is a match between learning styles and teaching styles; to determine if there is a relationship between an academic achievement and a match between learning styles and teaching styles as well as to determine there is a relationship between teachers' evaluation and a match between learning styles and teaching styles. However, researchers differed in their findings. For instance, the findings of Raines (1978); Spires (1983); Zippert (1985); Charkins, O'Toole and Wetzel (1985); Van Vuren (1992); Miglietti (1994); Klavas (1994); Braio (1995) (2011) and so on supported matching learning and teaching style in order to facilitate learning, however, the findings of Scerba (1979), Hunter (1979), Battle (1982), Guinta (1984), Reid (1987), Campell (1989, Lyons (1991), Wallace (2002), Isemonger & Sheppard (2003), Tight (2010), Naseriah & Sarab (2013), Palabiyik (2014) and so on revealed that there was no significant difference in achievement when there was a match between teaching and learning styles; however, the majority of researchers reported the match between two enhanced student achievement, as indicated by course grade and exam scores, when there was a match between students' preferred learning styles and instructors' preferred teaching styles. Thus, these studies added the importance of matching teaching style with learning style to the growing body of research as it affects student achievement.
Regarding to the results of the studies above, it is ultimately crucial to understand and identify each student's learning style in order to be able to make him/her more focused on an attentive and successful learner. As Gilakjani (2012) mentions providing positive correlation between teaching and learning styles will aid in improving students' overall success, enhancing both motivation and efficiency, and creating a positive attitude towards language learning. Consequently, many effective ideas have been proposed by various researchers and theorists to be able to address the students' needs. One way to positively affect the students' attitudes towards learning English is matching learners' learning styles with instructor's teaching style. Moreover, by the help of matching the two, it is possible to reinforce and enhance students' academic achievement tremendously regarding to the fruitful evidences that has been provided above.

reading comprehension
Reading skill is one of the most important skill to be mastered efficiently for succeeding in the academic field. Lacking in reading skill results in not understanding, comprehending and not succeeding in other courses in their fields; therefore, it can cause in truancy, underpaid jobs and illiteracy in the next generation (Daggett, 2003;Kutner, Greenberg, Jin, Boyle, Hsu, & Dunleavy, 2007;Alharbi, 2015). Thus, there is an ultimately need to consider the ways in assisting students to enhance level of success in reading skill. However, there is no conclusive study to indicate that one particular variable is much more important than the others in enhancing students' reading comprehension in learning environment.
Reading Comprehension much like verbal communication that requires the ability to think critically about the author's message; therefore, the exchanging ideas and developing new ideas can persist concurrently. In other words, reading comprehension is a complicated task as having knowledge based on vocabulary and grammar of the target language is not enough in succeeding. Readers are required to have the ability of analysing, synthesizing, and evaluating in reading (Nimmo, 2008;Namjoo, & Marzban, 2014). Thus, in reading comprehension activities the readers seem to be passive, whereas their brains are required to be active as they are busy in understanding the message that has been intended to be transferred to the readers by analysing, synthesizing, and evaluating. Same accordingly, reading can be regarded as knowledge acquisition in many domains; therefore, the ability to construct correct and comprehensive representations of the texts has crucial implication for academic achievement, occupational success, and physical well-being (Freed, Stephan & Long, 2017). It needs the ability to understand the meaning of individual words for comprehending the given written texts (Duke & Carlisle, 2011;Verhoeven & Perfetti, 2008;Schiefele, Stutz & Schaffner, 2016).
Thus, reading is a complex skill as it is required to take into consider and understand individuals' differences that cause variation in reading skill especially among university students. Therefore, by the help of considering variations that results in having different preferences among individuals, teachers can become more effective in designing much more effective reading instructions. According to Meyer et al. (1984) reading can be accepted as an interaction among three variables namely as; reader variable such as verbal ability and word knowledge, text variable like text structure and task variable like telling all you remember from the things you read or solving a problem by the help information you read.

ımpact of learning styles on reading comprehension
The number of studies has been conducted based on clarifying the impacts of learning styles and students' achievement, however, the investigation on the reading skill and learning style remains very limit. Although there are various ways of teaching reading skill, the students generally struggle with being successful in reading and resulting in getting poor grades in IELTS reading tests.
A study on the correlation between learning styles and success in reading skill and math (Braio, 1995) proved that level of achievement has increased in accordance of developing the curricula to learners' learning styles. Another study by Spires (1983) ascertained that when learning preferences including sensory preferences and preferences regarding action, seating, temperature, light, sound, and strategies were employed step by step, the participants' level of achievement in reading skill significantly increased. Regarding to the study of Nganwa & Mwamwenda (1991) students' success is significantly affected by the environmental factors. It was proved that success in reading comprehension increases when the comfortable environment is designed in accordance to students' preferences. When comparing sensory learning styles and success in reading comprehension, the findings (Williams, 2010) indicated that there was a correlation between kinaesthetic, auditory, and visual learning styles and reading comprehension levels. Therefore, considering students' preferences including environmental factors or learning styles determines students' achievement directly or indirectly.
Although it seems to be all information is provided to the learners to answer, it is the most complex skill to master. Regardless their learning style, there would be various factors that may create dilemma in not succeeding in reading test. In clarifying this idea, Ramrathan & Mzimela (2016) claim that most learners commence schooling without having any exposure to reading; therefore, this lack of exposure results in various challenges to both teachers and learners. According to Joubert, Bester & Meyer (2008:81), teaching reading '… is more than a mere teaching of decoding signs and symbols into sounds and words'. A review of literature suggests that number of studies on the correlation between perceptual learning styles and reading comprehension is limited (Nganwa & Mwamwenda, 1991;Shea, 1983;Erginer, 2014). Therefore, by the help of this study it is hoped that the present study will provide contribution by filling a gap in understanding learning styles of different nationalities and being able to assist them for enhancing their achievement in reading tests.

Methodology
Purpose of the study: The purpose of the study is to examine the relationship between perceptual learning styles and reading comprehension success in sample of ENG 101. It is one of the compulsory courses that the students are required to take during their first semester at university. This course aims at developing students' reading and writing skills. Lacking in reading skills can result in not understanding, comprehending and not succeeding in other courses in their fields. Therefore, reading skill has been mainly inspected for this study regarding having taken into consideration students' perceptual learning style preferences in order to provide enlightenment to the future studies towards betterment of this field and to ameliorate students' success in the academic arena as well.
research question: This study was designed to seek answer for the following question: 1. Is there any relationship between learners' perceptual learning style and learners' English performances in the IELTS reading test?

Sub-questions
Regarding the above mentioned research question the study tries to find answers to the following sub-questions.
• Are there any significant differences between students' major learning styles and their successes in IELTS reading test?
• Are there any significant differences between students' negligible learning styles and their successes in IELTS reading test?
• Are there any significant differences between different age groups and the IELTS Reading Test Scores?
• Are there any significant differences between male and female students in Reading Test Scores?
• Are there any significant differences among students from different countries in Reading Test Scores? research design: The survey method was applied for the investigation of the issues of interest as it was the most appropriate research design regarding to the intended goal; therefore, a survey questionnaire was developed on the basis of determining the participants' basic demographic information including age, gender and nationality, and the major-minor and negligible learning styles. 5-point Likert Scale was used in order to indicate their preferences for each statement of the questionnaire. After completing the questionnaire, the participants were required to take IELTS reading test to be able determine whether there is a significant relationship existed between their preferred perceptual learning style and success in the reading test. Therefore, a quantitative and qualitative descriptive methodology was applied in this evaluation study.
Participants: Participants were 154 undergraduates from international law and psychology programs, at Cyprus International University during first semester, 2017-2018. Cluster random sampling was applied in the selection of participants and they were all in their first year at university. The participants were made up of 80 males and 74 females ranging ages between 18-20 from Turkey, Cyprus, Nigeria, Palestine, Jordan and Syria. These participants were required to take ENG 101 as a compulsory course by attending 4-lecture hours during their first semester.

ınstruments and procedures
Two measuring instruments were employed throughout the study. The first was the Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire (PLSPQ) developed by Reid (1987) which consists of five statements on each of the six learning style preference to be measured as named as visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile, group learning and individual learning. The first four categories constitute the perceptual learning style and the remaining two make up the social category. The participants in the study were first asked to complete the the questionnaire, so they responded on the basis of a five point Likert scale, ranging from "strongly agree to "strongly disagree. According to Reid the validation of the questionnaire was done by the split half method. The second instrument was an IELTS Reading Test (A neuroscientist reveals how to think differently) consisting of fourteen questions based on the passage and six more questions were added to the test (2 questions were added based on identifying topic of the paragraph and 4 questions for identifying topic sentences). Therefore, the reading test consists of one reading comprehension passage and twenty multiple-choice questions. They had 50 minutes to read the passage and answer the questions. Based on the results, the researcher investigated the relationship between learning styles and reading comprehension of students.

Measuring validity/reliability of ıElTS reading test
Two measuring instruments were conducted throughout the study namely as IELTS Reading Test and Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire (PLSPQ) which was developed by Reid (1987). Reliability of the reading test (the IELTS reading passage) was checked on a group of 32 students through test-retest correlation and the results revealed that students' pre-test scores and post-test scores were significantly correlated (r(48)=.931, p<.01).

results and discussion
This section encompasses the findings and discussions related to the research question and sub-questions. The results of the study were analyzed into two sections. The first one included an analysis based on the correlation between participants' perceptual learning style preferences and their success in IELTS reading test. The second one consisted of an analysis based on planer view of participants' individual differences considering age, gender and country. The results indicate that there are statistically significant differences between reading test scores of different learning styles (F(5,153)=2.575, p=.029)). Levene test is also applied to the data for checking homogeneity of variances and the results indicate that there are statistically significant differences between variances of different major learning styles (F(5,148)=4.272, p=.001). Consequently, the findings show that variances of groups are not homogenous and post-hoc analysis is conducted for unequal variances situation. Further post-hoc analysis is performed with Dunnett's T3 Test since variances are not equal. 1.000 *. The mean difference is significant at the 0.05 level.

Q1) Are there any significant differences between students' major learning styles and their successes in ıElTS reading test?
All the learning style groups are compared and the only difference is found between Group learners (M=42.38, SD=11.360) and Kinesthetic learners (M=54.12, SD=18.203). The mean of Group learners' test score is significantly lower than the mean of kinesthetic learners' test scores p=.018). This shows that the success of kinesthetic learners in IELTS reading test is significantly higher than group learners' success.  SD=12.199). Thus, there are differences among IELTS Reading Test mean scores of negligible learning style groups but further variance analysis is needed in order to clarify if there is a significant relationship among groups. As shown in Table 6, the results indicate that meaningful difference is not depicted between reading test scores of different negligible learning styles (F(5,153)=.941, p=.456)). This shows that the success of the students in the IELTS reading test is similar among negligible learning styles of students; therefore, negligible learning style is not a significant factor in the success of IELTS reading test. The table above shows that there are three different age groups among students who took the IELTS Reading Test. Mean score for students aged between 17 and 19 is 50.94 (M=50.94,SD=15.833), mean score for students aged between 20 and 22 is 49.11 (M=49.11,SD=16.608) and mean score for students aged between 23 and above is 51.43 (M=51.43,SD=13.462). In order to find out if there is a significant difference between reading test mean scores of different age groups, analysis of variance (ANOVA) test was applied. The results indicate that there is no significant difference between reading test scores of different age groups (F(2,153)=.300, p=.741)). This shows that success in the IELTS reading test of students at three different age groups are same and age cannot be a factor in reading achievement of students. Q4) Are there any significant differences between male and female students in reading test scores? As shown in Table 8, mean score for male students is 49.48 (M=49.48, SD=15.453) and mean score for female students is 51. 67 (M=51.67,SD=16.128). In order to find out if there is a meaningful relationship between reading test scores of male and female students, Independent samples T-Test was applied. The study does not depict a meaningful difference between reading test scores of female students and male students (t(152)=. 833, p=.406, d=.01)). It shows that the success in IELTS reading test of students between male and female students are similar and gender cannot be a prominent factor in reading achievement of students. The table above shows that the participants are from six different countries -Turkey, Cyprus, Nigeria, Palestine, Jordan and Syria. Students from Syria (M=57.14, SD=7.559) get the highest mean scores. Second highest mean score belongs to the students from Nigeria (M=53.52, SD=15.650). Third mean score is from Turkey (M=48.80, SD=13.251). Lowest mean scores belongs to Palestine (M=43.33, SD=16.956) and Cyprus (M=42.08, SD=19.593). Therefore, the analysis proves that there are differences among Reading Test mean scores of students from different countries, however, further variance analysis is required for determining whether there is a significant difference between each group. In order to find out if there is a significant relationship among reading test mean scores of students from different countries, analysis of variance (ANOVA) test was applied. The results indicate that there is a significant relationship among reading test scores of students from different countries (F(5,153)=3.443, p=.006)). Therefore, it shows that reading successes of students significantly differ among some of the students from different countries but further post-hoc analysis should be conducted in order to compare the level of the differences between groups. Levene test was also applied to the data for checking homogeneity of variances and the results indicate that there is not any meaningful relationship among variances of different major learning styles (F(5,148)=2.214, p=.056). This shows that variances of groups can be accepted as homogenous and post-hoc analysis should be conducted for equal variances situation. Further post-hoc analysis was performed regarding to Bonferroni Test since variances can be accepted as equal. The table above indicates that the students from all country groups are compared and the only difference is found between students from Nigeria (M=53.52, SD=15.650) and the students from Jordan (M=40.00, SD=10.607). Nigerian learners test score mean is significantly higher than Jordanian learners test score mean (MD=13.523, p=.045). This shows that the success of Nigerian students in IELTS reading test is significantly higher than the students from Jordan.

Conclusions and suggestions
As a conclusion, various scholars in the field of second language learning accept the impact of individual learner differences like learning styles on the success of second language learning. In order to put emphasis on the importance of learning style to language learning, the researcher strongly supports by saying that the knowledge is like water. If you do not know how to learn and how to keep it, it evaporates. In the light of this idea, it may be more fruitful to correlate learning styles with their learners' preferences in language learning, however, it does not refer to distinguishing the gifted ones from the untalented ones. With the respect to learning style preferences, individuals can also achieve success even their major preferred learning style has not been tailored or considered with their preferences. With the aim of providing further benefit in the field of SLA regarding how better to meet the individual education needs of L2 learners, it was examined whether there was a correlation between students' preferred perceptual learning style and success in the IELTS reading test.
Regarding to the result of the study which was mainly aimed to find out whether there was a significant relationship between the students' success in the IELTS reading test and their preferred perceptual learning styles, kinaesthetic learners significantly got higher scores regarding to other learners. It was provided fruitful evidence that the most outstanding learning style in which affecting students' success in IELTS reading test was kinaesthetic learning style; therefore, it is required to take into account what language teachers can do in order to facilitate their students' leaning and to enhance their success in IELTS reading tests.
The second part of the study consisted of an analysis based on planer view of participants' individual differences considering age, gender and country to determine if relationships existed between students' success in the IELTS reading test and individual differences. The research results indicated there were not any significant differences between reading test scores of different age groups. It proved that success in the IELTS reading test of students at three different age groups were similar and age cannot be a factor in determining the success of reading achievement of students. Moreover, the results indicated that there were no significant differences between reading test scores of female students and male students; therefore, it revealed that the success in IELTS reading test of students between male and female students were similar and gender cannot be a prominent factor in determining the success of the students' IELTS reading achievement. However, regarding to the factor of country where the students were from Nigerian learners test score mean was significantly higher than other students.
It is considered advisable that considering students' learning styles will enhance and provide unquestionably contributions to the success in the IELTS reading test. In order to promote students' success it is required to take into account students' individual differences as they seem to a closed box. If you do not provide effective learning environment which includes and appreciates students' learning styles, the teacher can be less effective that they can be. Therefore, reading instructors are required to determine their students' preferred learning styles through learning style inventories before beginning their first reading classes and they need to organize their reading lessons regarding to their students.