An Investigation into the Relationship among Turkish EFL Students’ Learning Styles, Motivation and English Proficiency

Abstract

This study sets out to find out the relationship among Turkish EFL students’ learning styles, motivation and English proficiency. Data have been collected via online questionnaires from 92 Turkish EFL students during 2022-2023 academic year and analyzed by Point biserial correlation, Chi-square, Mann-Whitney U, Kruskal Wallis, One-way ANOVA and descriptive statistics. The findings indicate that there is no relationship between motivation and foreign language passing grade but English success level. There is no correlation among some learning style dimensions, English proficiency and motivation. There is no difference in gender, age groups and faculties in terms of learning styles but there is a significant relationship between the gender of the students and their perception learning style (male students: sensing learning style). With a regard to the gender of the students and age groups, there is no significant relationship between English proficiency and motivation scores. Nevertheless, students show a significant difference in terms of English success level, foreign language passing grade, instrumental motivation and total motivation scores but integrative motivation according to their faculties.