Novìtnâ Osvìta (Dec 2018)
COGNITIVE ASPECT OF LEARNING STYLE IN DIFFERENTIATED ESP INSTRUCTION FOR THE FUTURE IT SPECIALISTS
Abstract
The paper deals with the issue of cognitive aspect of learning style of information technology (IT) students that is urgent in organising differentiated instruction of English for Specific Purposes at universities. R. Oxford's Style Analysis Survey and R. Amthauer's testing of intelligence have been used for studying the cognitive aspect. As the specifics of IT field are focused on such actions of IT specialists as perception, processing and implementation of textual, symbolic, graphical information, presented in oral and written forms, the most valuable parameters for organising the learning process and work with information for the future IT specialist are sensory modality (auditory, visual and kinesthetic) and the way of processing information (analytic and synthetic). Testing the third-year IT students and the fourth-year IT students has confirmed the statement of R. Oxford that learning styles are not dichotomous. Also, testing has shown that among auditory, visual, kinesthetic and mixed modalities of IT students, the dominant sensory modalities are auditory and mixed. Mixed modalities are represented by four groups of students: learners with visual, auditory and kinesthetic modality; learners with visual and kinesthetic modality; learners with visual and auditory modality; learners with auditory and kinesthetic modality. Testing results of the third-year and the fourth-year IT students’ way of processing ideas in the learning process indicate the tendency of predominance of the synthetic way of processing information and also mixed synthetic and analytic ways of processing information in the IT students. According to the R. Amthauer's test of the verbal and nonverbal intelligence of IT students can be presented as the relation 3(spatial)˂1(mathematical)˂2(verbal). The theoretical and practical thinking of the third- and fourth-year IT students are relatively balanced. All the specifics of IT students should be taken into account in the differentiated instruction of English for specific purposes. The ways of using such specifics are presented in recommendations.
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