Assessment of Individual Learning Style Preferences with Respect to the Key Language Competences

Abstract

The paper focuses on the assessment of individual learning style preferences of students of two different disciplines, Management of Tourism and Applied Informatics, at Faculty of Informatics and Management, University of Hradec Kralove. The Felder-Silverman learning styles inventory was administered to students in Professional English language course in the Blackboard learn environment to monitor and check students’ proficiency of key language competences. Descriptive statistics identified that students do vary in their preference for particular learning style with a great variety of learning style preferences distributed among the sample groups of students. A large number of the students showed mild preference to Active, Visual and Sequential learning styles. On the other hand, there is a large group of students displaying a strong preference to Sensing learning style dimension. The key language competences defined by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) are tested in the computer-based environment with a special view on studentś individual learning styles.