Foreign language teaching to medical students depends on solving various institutional problems. In this sense, its effectiveness is a variable which influences the level of education at the university. Effectiveness of academic education depends on two groups of conditions- one is the purely material aspect- the place and conditions in which education takes place, the financial resources and the second one includes the psychoemotional aspect of training- the so-called didactic costs which include the physical and emotional efforts invested in the process of training both on the side of the lecturer and student. One of the ways to improve effectiveness is by restricting didactic costs- the less the psychoemotional tension and anxiety- the better results would a student achieve. Giving the student the opportunity to “manage his/her own manner of learning” and placing the student in the centre of the educational process would inevitably lead to increasing student motivation.Another mechanism to achieve effectiveness and quality of education is through activating the inner motivation of students to learn a foreign language. The latter is influenced by factors such as concentration, attention, a feeling of complete participation in the process of training, lack of fear of failure, assuming responsibility for the achieved results etc. A new aspect of contemporary learning success is differentiation in education, introduction of the individual, personal style of learning of each student. An appropriate instrument or tool in achieving motivation is for the learning process to follow and conform to the different learning styles of students. The individual learning style implies the individual preferences in perceiving and memorizing information. The aim of the present paper is to identify these styles in students from the Medical University – Plovdiv and thus to identify their satisfaction with foreign language learning. The survey was conducted in 2017 among 140 students from 16 countries. A written questionnaire and a psychological test were used to gather the data. Determinants for satisfaction were identifies as: the material setting and technological equipment, personal characteristics of the teacher and the microclimate in the student group. An adapted LSI (Learning Style Inventory) specifically adapted for Bulgaria which includes four types of approaches to the learning process- specific experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization and active experimentation was used. The results are distributed according to gender, specialty, year of studies and Kolb’s learning styles- divergent, assimilative, convergent and accommodative. The leading learning style according to our survey proves to be the convergent on with women having higher values (32,14%) than men (24,28%), next comes the assimilative learning style with men having higher value (17,14%) as opposed to women (14,28%). The accommodative is next – 5% of women and 3.57% men prefer this learning style and the least proffered one is the divergent one – 3,57% of women and 2,88% of men prefer it.
Learning styles and vocabulary learning by Iranian undergraduate EFL learners
