Learning Styles of Saudi ESP Students

Abstract

Explorations in learning styles have proved the significance of the ways students approach, assimilate, and process information. Students’ perceptions and their organization influence the quality of language learning and guide them towards autonomy too. This study attempts to identify the preferred perceptual learning styles of 86 Saudi English for Specific Purposes (ESP) female students in the Preparatory Year Deanship at Prince Sattam bin Abdul Aziz University, Saudi Arabia. To accomplish this aim, a Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire (PLSPQ) developed by Joy Reid (1987) was used. The results showed that the participants’ major learning styles were Kinesthetic, Group, Auditory, Visual, and Tactile, whereas their minor style was Individual. The analysis of the data also revealed that the most preferred learning style was the Kinesthetic learning style (18.64%, M=4.42), and the least preferred one was the Individual learning style (14.30%, M=3.39). The second to fifth places belonged to Group (17.19%, M=4.07), Auditory (16.81%, M=3.98), Visual (16.55%, M=3.92), and Tactile (16.52%, M=3.91) learning styles. The findings have implications for teachers, syllabus designers, and researchers to take into consideration students’ preferred learning styles for language learning while teaching, changes in the learning environment, and material adaptation.