Abstract :
ABSTRACT
Writing skill is considered more difficult compared to other skills. Thus by
identifying the students? learning style preferences, the researcher presumed
that both students and teachers are expected to have the solution. The aim of
this study was to identify the correlation between learning style preferences
and writing achievement and at finding out the relationship between
learning style preferences and gender, major, residency, and study resources
of tenth grade students at a private senior high school in Palembang. Simple
random sampling technique was implemented to select 100 participants
within the population of 282 tenth grade students. The instruments used in
this study were VARK questionnaire version 7.8, self-made questionnaire of
socio-demographic data, and interview. The obtained data were analyzed by
using IBM SPSS software, one-way ANOVA, and chi-square. It was
concluded by using ANOVA that there was no correlation between learning
style preferences and writing achievement (p = 0.062). Meanwhile, a
relationship was found between class and learning style preferences by
using chi-square test (p = 0.007). Based on the results of the interview, the
importance of knowing each student?s learning style preferences was
claimed to be very crucial to help studying more effective and easier. Hence,
it was expected that this study gave significant information to students,
teachers, school, and future researchers.
Keywords: Learning style preferences, writing achievement, socio?demographic characteristic