EFL Teacher’s Strategies in Accommodating Students’ Needs with Various Learning Styles

Abstract

This study aims to investigate teachers’ strategies in accommodating students’ needs with various learning styles in English classes of one elementary school in Salatiga. To reach this aim, this research worked on two research questions: “What are the students’ learning styles?” and “What are the teacher’s strategies in accommodating the students’ needs with various learning styles?”. One English teacher in Salatiga was observed, and Fifth and Sixth Grade students filled out a questionnaire. By using Fleming’s Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic (VAK) theory (1987), the result of this study shows that visual and auditory were the two most favored learning styles by the students in three different classes. However, it was also found that kinesthetic and other combinations of learning styles such as visual-auditory, visual-kinesthetic, and auditory-kinesthetic were also preferred by a small number of students in the classrooms. The second findings concerning the teacher’s strategies used the framework proposed by Gilakjani (2012a) that there are nine strategies the teacher could use to accommodate the students' needs with various learning styles. This study noted that the strategy mostly used by the teacher observed in this study was combining visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic techniques in those different three classes.