Mind and Body Learn Together: Embodied Cognition and Language Learning

The study aims at investigating how the fitness between learners´ learning styles and adopted learning modalities influences the learning of English as a foreign language (EFL) by elementary school students. A quantitative research was adopted. 87 fifth graders participated in this study. They were randomly assigned to three groups of learning modalities: video, gesture-based, and 3D virtual. They learned 18 English phrases related to motions for 3 times, once a week. Both performance test and learning style questionnaire were administered after the treatment completed. The analysis results of the current study show that the EFL learners´ performances did not differ among the three learning modalities. However, EFL learners´ learning styles also influence their performance. Implications of this study for language education and teaching are discussed.