A cross‐cultural study of Taiwanese and Kuwaiti EFL students’ learning styles and multiple intelligences

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to relate the findings of a survey of learning styles and multiple intelligences that was distributed among two different cultural groups of Freshman‐level EFL students in Taiwan and Kuwait in order to confirm its consistency for developing teaching techniques appropriate for each group’s general profiles. Data collection consisted of a survey adopted from two standardised instruments. Part one of the survey targeted the students’ preferred learning styles and part two was focused on multiple intelligences. Data analysis identified the dominant learning styles and multiple intelligences in each group. Implications were drawn for conducting other cross‐cultural studies in EFL settings in order to develop teaching techniques that accommodate each cultural group and to design teaching tasks and activities that expand the two groups’ present learning styles and intelligences.

Keywords:

• cross‐cultural studies
• learning styles
• multiple intelligences