This study investigates the learning styles of college and university Russian-speaking students of English as a second language (ESL) through an analysis of their responses to Reid’s (1984) Perceptual Learning Styles Preference Questionnaire (PLSPQ), of their responses to a background questionnaire, and of data from oral interviews. The research questions are: 1. What learning styles emerged from Reid’s PLSPQ? 2. How well did the PLSPQ findings correspond to the oral interview results? 3. Did the learning style preferences reflect more the students’ individual preferences or their cultural traditions? Findings from the data indicate that the preferred learning style of these Russianspeaking students is kinesthetic, closely followed by auditory. In addition, the results of the data suggest that the learning style preferences of these subjects reflect more their individual learning style preferences than the influence of cultural traditions. Discrepancies, however, arose in the findings among the three elicitation instruments. The article also provides insights into the area of research design and methodology and questions the validity of the PLSPQ.

Many students who are nonnative speakers of English, yet highly proficient, are placed into basic writing or English as a Second Language courses when they enter college. While these students may have advanced oral English proficiency, their writing frequently suffers from a lack of training in academic writing and commonly contains fragments and run-ons, a frustrating sentence-level problem for these students. A review of current writing texts uncovered a general failure to treat these problems as a sentence-boundary issue. The approach taken here is that such students will be able to monitor their writing for incorrectly formed sentences if given a system designed to help them understand English sentence structure. The key concept is Glue, a term used for all clause markers. Working through exercises, in which they label the Glue and systematically identify fragments, run-ons, and complete sentences, students see a system emerging, which brings them to an understanding of English written conventions. Using Glue, the students gain control of their writing and are able to avoid fragments and run-ons.