Identifying students’ learning style preferences regarding some variables in the EFL classroom: The case of Turkey

Year 2010, Volume: 6 Issue: 3, 51 - 64, 01.12.2010

Cevdet Yılmaz Salih Zeki Genç

Abstract

During the past decade, the identification of students’ learning style preferences has gained importance in educational research. This study aimed at identifying the individual perceptions of the learner style preferences of Turkish EFL learners. Using learning style preference categories and a 28-item language learning preference questionnaire adopted from Willing, the authors focussed on a group of 60 students at the ELT Department, Onsekiz Mart University. As a further step, the emphasis was also placed on the variables such as sex, attendance to prep class and schools graduated. In doing so, the study sought to find out whether these variables were likely to have an impact on students’ learning style preferences. Results showed the learning preferences of students in different learning style preference categories. The data obtained also revealed that a meaningful correlation was found with regard to the difference between the schools graduated and students’ perceptions of learning style preferences

Keywords

Learning Style, English as a Foreign Language (EFL), Turkish Students