EFL students’ perceptions and practices on learning strategies towards ESP for Tourism at School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Can Tho University, Vietnam

Abstract

Learning strategies are determined as an effective approach to learning ESP. To implement more useful learning strategies, it is essential to understand the extent of practice toward learning strategies. The study focused on six (6) learning strategies, including (1) Memorization, (2) Cognitive, (3) Metacognitive, (4) Compensation, (5) Affective, and (6) Social, which were applied in four English skills belonging to English for Tourism courses. A hundred-item questionnaire was administered to investigate the perception and practice of learning strategies and interviews for students and teachers were employed to examine students’ practice of their involvement in learning strategies activities and discover teachers’ observations of students’ practice in their class. The study sample consists of 70 EFL students who have taken the three courses of English for Tourism 1, 2, and 3 in their curriculum. The findings revealed that students have a positive attitude to a significant extent and students had positive perception toward their learning strategies performances. There found a medium correlation between the extent of perception impacts on students' practice that points out two hypotheses: (1) The higher the student's perception, the higher the extent of practice; (2) Students have good perception but the extent of practice does not depend on their perception. The findings may contribute to the discipline of ESP since they not only help students understand the significance of learning strategies in learning ESP but also help ESP teachers understand students’ perceptions, from which teachers can generate more effective and appropriate learning strategies in classes for enhancing students’ productivity in learning ESP for Tourism.