Sudanese EFL Students' Preferred Learning Styles and Evaluation Techniques

Abstract

The effectiveness of learning in any language is usually determined by the type of learning styles adopted by the language learner himself. This study traces the heterogeneous learning style used by EFL undergraduate students in the department of English language, Faculty of Education, University of Khartoum in Sudan. The study took place during the academic year 2016 / 2017. Undergraduate students have miscellaneous strategies they recommend to use promptly inside the classroom. To function productively in classrooms, teachers should think about their students' favored learning styles because at this university level students have different backgrounds, strengths, weaknesses, concerns, desires, and even they have different levels of motivation and styles to studying. Thus, teachers should be more acquainted with the divergent methods to their students' better learning. A questionnaire was given out to (205) male and female students which covered twenty-five indispensable items in learning styles. Students responses were analyzed statistically to measure the efficiency of these learning styles used by the students in the department of English language and work out whether the distribution of learning styles was distinct over the four years of the program. Results revealed that there existed notable mismatch and correspondences in learned style choices. This indicated that students have affirmative perspective towards learning styles. Thus, teachers should regard their students' preferred learning styles and try to use different teaching styles inside the classroom to avoid monotonous classes that are not harmonized with their students' learning styles. Suggestions are stated for required future research in finding out how language learning styles can reinforce students in becoming more competent foreign language learners.

Keywords: Learning styles, Evaluation techniques, Sudanese EFL students

DOI: 10.7176/JEP/10-3-15