Ali Soyoof - Islamic Azad University, Shiraz branch
Mohammad Jokar - Shiraz State University

Researchers attribute the success of the students in assimilating the new information to many factors. One of the factors that are worth mentioning is students’ learning styles. Learners have clear preferences for how they go about learning new material (Lightbown &spada, 1999, p.58). Thus, teachers ought to discover the learning and cognitive preferences that students bring with them into the classroom and take those very learning strategies into account while teaching. Saleh (1997, cited in kok, 2010) asserts that prior to building the teaching and instructional practices, a full understanding of the students’ learning styles should be obtained. Among the learning styles, brain hemisphericity, or to put it in more special terms, brain specialization has attracted the attention of some researchers. Sperry (1977) propounded his split-brain model of intelligence as a result of his works on aphasic patients .In his seminal work he attributed some functions to different hemispheres of the brain. Brain has two hemispheres that are assigned different functions. Using Tendero’s metaphorical statement about brain dominance, In a sense, the body cannot serve two masters , We can state that often one side of the brain is dominant over the other. Tendero (2000) reports Munzert’s study (1980) in which he points out that the functioning of the left and right hemispheres of the brain differ in the type of mental activities processed in them. According to Munzert, on the one hand, the left hemisphere is the head- quarter for processing information that has to do with one’s intellect such as memory, language, logic, computation, classification, writing and analysis. On the other ,the right hemisphere is responsible for controlling functions involved in intuition ,extrasensory perception, attitudes and emotions, visual and spatial relationships, music, rhythm, physical coordination and activity .Traditional tests did not take into account students’ styles and preferences. This study aims to explore if learning styles in general and brain hemisphericity in particular play any role in how learners perform in a cloze test. To this end, Left/ Right/ Both brained learners (15 in each group) were given a series of cloze texts, which were parallel with their proficiency level, in a single administration. The findings of this study can help test-makers consider the significance of test-takers’ brain hemisphericity while preparing a test. Based upon the findings of this study it can be concluded that both-brained learners had better performance than that of right-brained and left-brainer learners in cloze test due to the fact that they benefit from their both hemisphere at the same time.

Brain hemisphericity, Learning Styles, Cloze test