ASSESSING INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS FROM CHINA THROUGH VAK ASSESSMENT

Much has been said about the importance of suiting students’ learning style in maximizing its impact in learning. As international students from mainland China, demographic factors and language barriers are the most challenging factors that these students will face. These students will have to undergo Intensive English Classes before accepted as undergraduate for engineering course in Unversiti Malaysia Pahang. Being educators, language teachers need to assess the way the students really learn English as mostly English is regarded as foreign language rather than second language. And most of the times, the way we teach is never the way they learn and this mismatch will eventually lead to undesirable result. Indeed, the transition needs to be assisted and well monitored because not everybody is suitable to a certain language learning (second language or foreign language) strategy. To add, before it is too late to find out it is a erroneous teaching strategy at the very beginning and become turkey the next, this study is determined to explore 31 international students from China learning styles through the use of VAK Assessment. It intends to find out the sample preference in learning style namely Visual, Audio and Kinaesthetic, not only for English course but in Engineering field at large. The study is essential to both groups, the educators at the university as well as the international students, so that the teaching, learning and evaluation can be strategized to match the preference.