The Impact of Learning Styles and Applying Semantic-Mapping on the High School Student's Critical Thinking Ability and English Vocabulary Learning Improvement

The present study was carried out in order to investigate the impact of learning styles and applying semantic-mapping on the high school students’ critical thinking ability and English vocabulary learning improvement. To fulfill the purpose of the study, a sample of 123 female students studying Math and Physics were randomly selected from 4 educational districts of Karaj narrowed down to Farzanegan High school in the 1st educational district using accidental clustering sampling method. Then, they were divided into two homogenized experimental and control groups. The students completed the Critical Thinking Questionnaire (Honey, 2004) and Learning Style Questionnaire (O’Brien, 1989) in the pre- and post-test steps. They also were administered a general proficiency test of Nelson (A050) for the purpose of homogeneity, and a vocabulary test to ensure their illiteracy of them at the onset of the treatment. In addition, the same vocabulary test was taken as a post-test after 12 sessions of instruction and learning through semantic-mapping, as a vocabulary learning strategy. The data was collected. Based on the statistical analysis, the results showed the learning styles had no statistically significant impact on the students’ critical thinking ability and their vocabulary learning improvement (two-way, and ANOVA analyses) the first and second hypotheses of the study were confirmed. The third and fourth hypotheses were rejected as the results revealed that semantic-mapping had a statistically significant impact on the critical thinking ability and vocabulary learning improvement of the participants (independent T-tests). Then, some pedagogical and practical implications and suggestions for further research as well as limitations of the study are provided.