A Close Look at the Chinese Cultural Influence on Students’ Learning Styles and Strategies

Following a clarification of the relationship between learning styles, learning strategies and cultural factors that help shape them, the article presents the results of a free-writing questionnaire that asked 28 native English teachers to express their views on Chinese students' learning styles and strategies. Inductive analysis of these free-writings indicated that Chinese students had certain types of learning styles and strategies, which were closely related to their traditional education pattern and cultural values. After tracing the origins of the cultural influence on the students' learning styles and strategies, the article offers some practical suggestions, which might be beneficial to English teachers in China as well as those teachers who teach English in the same situation worldwide.