Learner and Task Considerations in Designing Instruction for Native Adult Learners

Abstract

The study contributes to an exploration of directions in which instruction might be in­dividualized, taking into account modality strength and preference in learning. Rather than following the suggestion in the literature that Native people are predominantly "visual" in learning style in comparison with non-Natives, in this study, which involved 111 non-Na- tive adult learners and 18 Native adult learners, all participants were assessed for relative preference for visual and verbal learning style. Knowledge and comprehension test scores were compared for the groups, relative to their use of instructional material that was dif­ferentiated by the inclusion or absence of analogical visual illustration. Comparisons be­ tween performance outcome measures on the one hand and mental imagery and verbal reasoning subtest scores on the other seemed to indicate different general patterns between Natives and non-Natives. A formally untested but evident conclusion, however, is that in­ dividual differences were as important as Native/non-Native differences. The evident com­ plex interaction of learning style modality preference, instructional material, learning task, and individual and cultural background suggests that in the creation of learning materials, the interaction of instructional variables, not the variables in isolation, should be the focus.