An analysis of EFL students’ learning main and sub-skills in terms of hand usage, study style and gender

Ercan Tomakin

African Educational Research Journal
Published: November 29 2020
Volume 8, Special Issue 3
Pages S109-S123
DOI: https://doi.org/10.30918/AERJ.8S3.20.078

Abstract

The brain asymmetry and contralateral control of the body by the left and right brain hemispheres is known (Crystal, 1997; Fromkin, 1998). It is widely accepted that language lateralization, damage to the left brain, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and results show that the left brain is regarded as the language learning center. Yet it is difficult to explain counter evidences such as Phinea Gage, an abbot, and Genie’s cases. Besides, it is also important to consider the left handed people’s cases. It does not matter whether the learnt language is L1 or L2; supposing that the language learning center is strictly limited to (lateralized) only the left hemisphere, it was difficult to explain how the left handed people have learned their L1 or L2. Hence this study investigated how undergraduate students learn the main and sub-skills of ELT according to hand-usage (left or right), study style (individual or group) and gender (male or female) variables. A questionnaire of seven skills including 5 options was applied to 27 left handed and 75 right handed EFL from grade 1 to 4. Fisher’s Exact Test (FET) was used to detect the statistical relations among each demographic variable and the students’ preference level for each different skill. Although the language learning is usually regarded as main function of the left brain, it was found that left handed students’ learning mother and English, visualizing the listened text by the left handed students, visualizing the grammar rules as figure, table and image by most right-handed males, the left handed females’ listening music while reading, visualizing the phonetic symbols by the left handed students tend to imply that the right brain has also relation with the language learning. Results were discussed with other findings and some suggestions were posed.

Keywords: Brain lateralization, language learning, main and sub-skills, hand usage, study style, gender.

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