Packevicz, the curriculum director at ELIC as well as an ESL instructor working with Chinese students for years, carried out a research on learning styles and multiple intelligences among some high-English-proficiency students in 5 Chinese universities in different areas of China. He was amazed at the fact that in spite of a lack of native speakers' input and a heavy use of grammar-translation approach, many mainland Chinese students seemed to have achieved surprisingly good communicative competence. At the presentation, Packevicz shared his even more surprising research findings and analyzed the possible reasons for these results.

One of his findings is that Chinese students demonstrated higher intrapersonal intelligence. He thought this might contribute to the influence of the learning philosophy of Chinese culture. For instance, self reflection and independent thinking was quite emphasized in Confucianism. He quoted a Chinese historian's words, "Correct your mistakes if you have them; if you don't, urge yourself to even greater effort", as an evidence of Chinese students' attitude of self examination based on reflection. Last, he suggested that the complex and reflective process that Chinese students learned Chinese characters might have reinforced their intrapersonal intelligence along the way. Packevicz also found that Chinese students' existential (spatial) intelligence was quite high, while their verbal intelligence came last on the list. He believed the limited living space in China might cause the students to develop such spatial intelligence. Packevicz admitted that the accuracy of his research results could be limited by some factors such as the small sample size or the test questions in English.

Overall, Packevicz's research has set a good start for all Christian educational organizations aiming to serve in China for long-term, so that they can prepare Christian EFL teachers with pedagogical approaches relevant to the learning styles of Chinese students.

Chunbo (Beth) Zhang