Adult EFL Students' Preferred Learning Styles and Motivation

Because of social and possibly biological influences, a number of differences i.e. gender exist in approaches to learning a second/foreign language. Adult EFL students vary in their perceptual learning style preferences. These differences influence adults learning motivation and success. This study was to explore what learning styles of adult EFL students (School of Continuing Education) prefer in order to better understand what impact and shape the language learning process and to help determine to design curriculum and instruction for classroom practice for higher achievement and increased motivation for learning. The instrument used to gather the data of 165 adult EFL students from three randomly selected schools was Innovated PLSP Questionnaire, which was on the basis of Reid’s Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire. It was increased computer-assisted style to measure adult EFL students for their auditory, visual, tactile, kinesthetic, individual, group, and computer-assisted learning style preferences. The study also explored if there is a relationship between adult EFL students’ preferred learning style and their motivation in learning English by using two items also new added in the Innovated Questionnaire. Means and standard deviations for each of the seven learning style preferences as well as Pearson correlation and Regression Analysis were applied in this study.