In the above section, a presumption was made that the dual-modality input in songs provides learners with more elaborate input and may thus lead to better
retention of the information. This presumption prompts further investigation of whether the efficacy of dual-modality input in songs would change as a result of learners’ preferred learning styles (i.e., visual and auditory learners). In this section, related literature of style-based instruction will be reviewed and then a discussion of assessment of learning styles will be provided.
2.3.1 Style-based Instruction
It has been widely accepted that learners with different preferred learning styles may need different instruction. In this attempt, Rohrer and Parshler (2012) reviewed literature on learning styles and found there were only about 20 appropriately designed studies in science and medicine. The result of most studies did not support the idea of tailoring instruction to learners’ preferred learning styles is effective. Three studies with a positive result were not able to offer persuading evidence for style-based instruction because of methodology problems (e.g., no measures of the data provided and unknown effect size).
Rohrer and Parshler thus suggested that, from a practical view, style-based instruction was “demanding” because learners had to be assessed by expensive tests first and then teachers should provide different versions of each class for different learners. Thus, style-based instruction was not necessary “unless its benefits were large.” They further suggested that instead of providing different instructions, teachers should focus more on “developing the most effective and coherent ways to present particular bodies of content, which often involve combining different forms of instruction.”
In other words, instead of providing instruction based on learners’ preferred styles, the more appropriate and effective method is to combine different kinds of
instruction and materials in the classroom. In this vein, since songs provide an eclectic combination of both visual and auditory input. Learning through songs may result in a better outcome for both visual and auditory learners.
2.3.2 Assessing Learners’ Learning Styles
The preceding review revealed that style-based instruction might not be necessary. However, to test this conjecture, choosing an appropriate learning-style assessment is important. In this section, a discussion of the prescriptive assessments will be made to provide a more appropriate way to determine students’ learning styles.
Most of the learning-style assessments that were implemented in schools consist of a self-report questionnaire. Below are two items extracted from a learning style questionnaire used in a junior high school in Taiwan:
1. Listening to teachers’ lectures helps me memorize the content better than reading the textbook.
2. I prefer listening to the news instead of reading the newspaper.
The problem with this kind of self-report questionnaire is that it is based on conscious retrospection of the learning experience and may not capture how a learner’s mind functions or processes the language in real-time. Unveiling the degree to which learners rely on a given modality in real-time linguistic input processing is difficult because the learners may not always be aware of this specific reliance. Such a specific input processing modality preference could be accurately captured only by a
“time-sensitive” instrument. Leveridge and Yang’s (2013) Caption Reliance Test (CRT) provides a plausible and time-sensitive instrument to determine learners’ input processing modality preference.
CRT test items consist of comprehension exercises and multiple-choice comprehension questions. To answer a CRT item, learners will first listen to a short speech or dialogue supported by simultaneous textual caption. Learners are not instructed to rely on a specific modality; instead, they are neutrally instructed to try to answer the comprehension questions based on their understanding. To unveil learners’
preferred modality in real-time language processing, discrepancies between the audio texts and visual textual caption are structured in some CRT items. The CRT consists of 75% congruent comprehension items—in which the audio texts and visual textual caption match with each other—and 25% incongruent items—in which a specific word in the visual textual caption does not match the audio texts. The proportion of the congruent and incongruent items in a CRT is decided so that the incongruent items are not obvious to learners. In answering an “incongruent” CRT comprehension question, learners may hear:
Man: Do you know where the library is?
Woman: Just keep going for two blocks and you’ll see it.
However, they will read “Do you know where the hotel is” in the caption. Learners’
responses in answering the corresponding comprehension question (see below) offer insight to their preferred modality in real-time input processing.
Question: Where does the man want to go?
A. Library.
B. Hotel.
C. Restaurant.
Leveridge and Yang assumed that learners who rely more on the visual modality may tend to read the visual caption first and thus choose B in the above comprehension test; whereas learners who rely more on the auditory modality may
tend to listen to the audio texts first and may therefore choose A. In other words, after answering all the incongruent CRT items, if learners tend to match the visual caption more than the audio, their preferred modality in real-time language processing will be regarded to be visual. In contrast, if learners tend to rely more on the audio and are not interrupted by the mismatched visual caption, their preferred modality in real-time language processing is auditory.
This design provides an easily conducted test for language teachers and researchers. Compared with the traditional conscious self-report questionnaire, language teachers and researchers can determine learners’ preferred modality in real-time language processing with a more objective, outcome-oriented testing method. To sum up, CRT can capture the learners’ real-time language processing preferences and may provide further insights on the efficacy of dual-modality on learners with different learning styles.