The Preferred Learning Styles and Strategies of Adult Thai EFL Students in a Bangkok Business Setting

Abstract

This exploratory study was designed to look at personal learning styles and preferred language learning strategies in Thai students of English. A questionnaire incorporating statements from Willing (1989) on learning style, and from Oxford (1990) on learning strategies, was constructed and administered to 30 adult EFL students at a large computer-network service company located in Bangkok. Although the results are inconclusive, they suggest adult students in Thailand represent the full range of learning styles but exhibit a slight preference for what Kolb (1979) called the Concrete Experience dimension; that is, students’ scores are highest for Willing’s (1989) Communicative Learning Style, followed closely by Concrete Learning Style. These results have implications in the classroom, both for general teaching and for specific strategy training. Thai students need to be explicitly taught to make better use of their preferred styles, in other words, to turn their love of group interaction into an effective learning strategy.