Learning Styles, Preferred Teaching Styles and Academic Achievement of Thai EFL Primary Students

Abstract

This study aimed to (1) to identify the preferred learning styles of Thai EFL primary students, (2) investigate the teaching styles preferred by the Thai EFL primary students, (3) examine the mean differences in the academic achievement of Thai EFL primary students’ learning styles and preferred teaching styles, and (4) investigate the relationship among academic achievement, learning styles and preferred teaching styles. The participants were 172 students aged 11-12 years who were studying in primary schools located in northeast Thailand. This study adopted a quantitative approach. The data was collected from two questionnaires and an academic achievement test. The data from the questionnaires and tests were entered into the SPSS program in order to generate descriptive statistics. Statistics used for data analysis consisted of descriptive analysis and two-way ANOVA.

The findings revealed that four learning styles exist among Thai EFL primary students. Auditory learner was the most common with 33.5%, followed by visual learners and kinesthetic learners at 32.3% and 20.6% respectively. The least common of the participants’ learning styles was a multi-learning style (13.5%). Moreover, four preferred teaching styles appeared among the participants. The greatest percentage of preferred teaching style was the multi-teaching style at 29%. The lowest percentage of preferred teaching style was the visual teaching style at 16.1%. Moreover, the auditory teaching style was higher than the kinesthetic teaching style at 28.4% versus 26.5%. It was found that there were non-significant differences in the academic achievement of participants learning styles at the 0.23 significance level. On the other hand, there was a significant difference in the academic achievement of the participants’ preferred teaching style at the 0.00 significance level. The results showed that there is a significant (0.00) correlation between academic achievement and preferred teaching style.

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