EFL Learners’ Beliefs and Learning Style Preferences:Links to Proficiency

This study explored EFL learners’ beliefs and perceptual learning style preferences. It also examined the relationship between these beliefs and preferences and their actual proficiency. The participants consisted of 78 college students, aged 21 to 27, from different majors. According to the scores achieved on an English proficiency test, they were placed into two groups (proficient and less-proficient) and asked to respond to a self-report questionnaire in class. The results showed that: (1) the great majority of participants under-rated their own proficiency level; (2) proficient learners were much more likely to believe that anyone can learn to speak English and that if they heard someone speaking English, they would approach them to practice; (3) a few of the less-proficient learners were still not aware of the structural differences between Korean and English; (4) less-proficient learners were much more likely to believe that the most important part of EFL learning is learning a lot of grammar rules; (5) the participants of both groups marked all six learning styles (i.e. visual, tactile, auditory, kinesthetic, group, and individual) as major preferences; but (6) the proficient learners demonstrated a significantly greater preference for tactile and kinesthetic learning styles than the less-proficient learners did.