An Investigation of English Language Students' Awareness of Perceptual Learning Style Preferences: Four Public Ethiopian Universities in Focus

Abstract

Abstract This study was conducted to determine the perceptual learning style preferences (PLSP) that the graduating TEFL students followed while learning the English language in the 2022–2023 academic year. People have diversified ways of perceptions, stages of motivation, and attitudes toward learning. They are different from each other in their preferences for acquiring knowledge consistently. The study was aimed to know the kinds and the strategies of PLSP students in the English language with MA Post-graduating classes. It focused on Reid's theory on visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile, individual, and group learning styles. As the primary sources of data were the subjects' insights into the learning process, the focus was on the actions that the learners consciously employed to facilitate learning. For the numerical interpretation of data, which were tabulated in a 5-point Likert Scale, percentage and overall mean were used to show the proportion of the participant's response to the close-ended questions. To elaborate on students' awareness of their PLSP, the documents from the questionnaire were tabulated and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The findings indicated that the universities' DELL Post-graduating students' Visual Learning, Auditory Learning, and group learning styles got a preference from the learners to a great extent; whereas, tactile learning styles, Kinesthetic learning, and Individual learning styles were less favored. From these findings, a few recommendations, understanding the importance of learning styles, taking care for effective teaching styles, wide-ranging flexible instructional planning, and using a diversity of teaching aids, have been forwarded Keywords: Auditory, group, individual, kinesthetic, tactile, visual.