An Investigation of English-Majored Students’ Learning Styles and Their Preferable Interaction Activities: A Case Study in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam

Abstract

Many changes have been observed in the Vietnamese education context. As a result, higher education institutions implemented many innovations in English teaching and learning, such as new course books, new programs, and new teaching techniques. Somehow, it creates several challenges for English as a foreign language (EFL) students and their motivation for learning. Learning styles have been considered as one of the course factors.The current study attempted to investigate English-majored students’ learning styles and their preferred interaction activities in EFL classes. The study was administered as a concurrent nested design in which the qualitative strand is embedded within the prominence of the quantitative one. There were 191 students, studying English high-quality programs in a public tertiary institution in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, who were recruited in this research. the results from questionnaires including thirty-one close-ended items and two open-ended ones showed that among the students, there are more visual learning styles than the counterparts, including auditory and kinesthetic ones. In terms of interaction activities in EFL classes, games are dominant. Based on the findings, some discussions and implications are presented at the end of the paper.