THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STUDENT' LEARNING STYLES AND THEIR LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGIES

The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between students' learning styles and strategies in Iranian EFL learners. The questions this study tried to answer were 1) what are learning style and strategy preferences of Iranian learners of English at university level, 2) whether there is a relationship between learning styles and strategies of learners 3) is there a difference in learning style and strategy preferences learners. To answer the questions, 140 students were randomly selected by coin-tossing to complete two questionnaires. One was used to identify students' learning styles and the other was used to identify students' learning strategies. In addition, think aloud protocols were held to determine cognitive and metacognitive strategies students used while reading in order to support quantitative results. The results of descriptive statistics revealed that kinesthetic, tactile, and auditory learning fall into the major learning styles. The data analysis of the second questionnaire revealed that metacognitive, social and cognitive strategies were favored the most. The results indicated that visual styles with affective, the auditory styles with metacognitive, the kinesthetic styles with cognitive, the tactile styles with cognitive, the individual learning styles with metacognitive, the group learning styles with metacognitive strategies had significant relationships, and none of the learning styles had a significant relationship with compensation and memory strategies. Based on the results obtained from MANOVA it concluded that gender of participants had a significant effect on their learning styles and strategies and female participants outperformed the male participants. Think aloud protocols revealed that participants used various cognitive and metacognitive strategies.