Understanding first year university students’ passivity via their attitudes and language behaviors towards answering questions in class

84 Truong Thi Nhu Ngoc. Journal of Science Ho Chi Minh City Open University, 7(4), 84-93 
UNDERSTANDING FIRST YEAR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ 
PASSIVITY VIA THEIR ATTITUDES AND LANGUAGE 
BEHAVIORS TOWARDS ANSWERING QUESTIONS IN CLASS 
TRUONG THI NHU NGOC 
Van Lang University, Vietnam – truongthinhungoc2303@gmail.com 
(Received: March 17, 2017; Revised: April 17, 2017; Accepted: May 08, 2017) 
ABSTRACT 
Learning styles and learning strategies play a key role in learners’ success and autonomy in language learning. 
However, the majority of research in this area is carried out in foreign context rather than locally. Thus, many false 
assumptions have been made about Asian learning styles in general and Vietnamese learners in particular, i.e. they 
are passive and group-oriented learners, and they tend to learn by rote and memorize knowledge. In an attempt to 
find out if Vietnamese first year university non-English majored learners are passive or active, the study investigates 
their attitudes and language behaviors towards answering questions in class. The major findings from valid 
questionnaires responded by 90 students from five different technology-grouped departments reveal that Vietnamese 
students are not passive at all and the reasons why they appear passive are related to their shyness and face-saving 
attitudes. No statistically significant association was found between students’ personality and their passivity in the 
classroom. 
Keywords: Active learners; Learning styles; Passive learners. 
1. Introduction 
In the past fifty years, a considerable 
number of different methodologies have 
emerged and have been claimed to be effective 
practices to enhance students’ second language 
learning capabilities. These methods and 
approaches are mostly determined by 
educators and teachers, which can lead to the 
fact that how students are taught is a far cry 
from what they need. For that reason, a more 
learner-centered approach would probably 
bring in expected results. However, how can 
teachers acquire a genuine understanding of 
their students in addition to knowing their 
needs? In order to deploy suitable classroom 
activities effectively, it is vital to understand 
individual students’ learning styles and 
strategies. Unfortunately, teachers often have 
misconceptions or false overgeneralizations 
about their students’ styles and strategies, due 
to being influenced by what they read and 
misinterpreting what they see. Thus, a 
conscientious teacher should be not only 
sensitive to dissimilarities amongst their 
students, but should also be able to avoid 
stereotyping them. It is obvious that the 
majority of second language learning research 
about Asian learners is carried out in English-
speaking countries, and thus an inaccurate 
picture of Asian learners in general, and 
Vietnamese learners, in particular, can be 
generated. Since the introduction of 
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) 
Method to Vietnam in 1990s, the learning and 
teaching practice has changed to a certain 
extent. Departing from the traditional way of 
learning, students are relatively more active 
thanks to classroom communicative activities. 
Nevertheless, teachers often complain that 
most of their students still remain quiet 
although they try to encourage them to talk 
and put them into groups so that they will feel 
more secure. This passivity can be attributed 
to the students’ individual personalities, or to 
the fact that they are still influenced by how 
they used to be taught. 
 Truong Thi Nhu Ngoc. Journal of Science Ho Chi Minh City Open University, 7(4), 84-93 85 
1.1. Purpose of the study 
Many passivity-related questions have 
been raised about Vietnamese learners in the 
new era of international economic integration: 
Are Vietnamese students passive in their 
thinking? Does their view about the suitability 
for speaking out in classroom make them 
appear passive in their classroom? This paper 
investigates the passivity of Vietnamese first 
year university non-English majored students 
with five major questions related to their 
attitudes and language behaviors towards 
answering questions in class. 
1. Do students self-assess themselves as 
passive or active students? 
2. If the teacher poses a question, when 
do students raise hands? 
3. If students remain reticent when their 
teacher asks questions, what will they do? 
4. Are students afraid of making mistakes 
in the classroom? If yes, what are the main 
reasons? 
5. Is students’ learning style dependent on 
their personality? 
1.2. Significance of the study 
In Vietnam, the issue of learning styles 
and strategies is not widely and duly 
understood. Many assumptions have been 
made about Vietnamese learners; most 
noticeably, they are passive learners. In fact, 
there has been little research on Vietnamese 
learning styles and, if any, there is no research 
carried out from students’ perspectives, asking 
students to reflect on their own learning style 
via their attitudes and language behaviors 
towards answering questions in class. If 
teachers know the answer to the afore-
mentioned questions, therefore, they will 
better be equipped to understand their 
students’ needs, and to know how to help 
them improve and tackle the problem of 
second language learning. They will also be 
able to adapt their teaching styles to match 
their students’ learning styles. For this myth 
to be unraveled, I have conducted this pilot 
research. 
2. Literature Review 
2.1. Definition of terms 
Before having a closer look at 
Vietnamese students’ language learning style, 
the following terms need to be clarified: style, 
learning style, active and passive. 
2.1.1. Style 
Style is a term referring to individual 
preferences or tendencies that are constant. In 
other words, styles are “those general 
characteristics of intellectual functioning” 
(Brown, 2000, p. 113) that belong to you and 
distinguish you from others. However, styles 
and abilities should not be confused. Style is a 
way of thinking and utilizing abilities 
(Stemberg, 1995, p. 266). Moreover, styles 
are changeable in accordance with tasks, time, 
context, the learning stage, culture and the age 
of the learners (Rubin, 1993, pp.48-49). It is 
noticeable that a person can have more than a 
style and no styles should be thought of as 
superior; they are just ‘different’ (Stemberg, 
1995, pp.268-269). 
2.1.2. Learning style 
In reality, there is “a bewildering 
confusion of definitions surrounding learning 
style conceptualizations” (Curry, 1991, 
p.249). On the one hand, learning styles can 
be defined as “a characteristic and preferred 
way of approaching learning and processing 
information” (Hedge, 2000, p. 18) or the 
“general orientations to the learning process 
exhibited by learners” (Nunan, 1999, p.55). 
On the other hand, learning styles are equated 
with cognitive styles, which are “consistent 
individual differences in preferred ways of 
organizing and processing information and 
experience (Messick, 1976, p.4) or “the link 
between personality and cognition” (Brown, 
2000, pp.113-114). In this case, learning 
styles can be divided into four categories: 
‘accommodators’ (who enjoy hands-on 
experience and discovery), ‘divergers’ (who 
are curious and want to explore the problems 
from different angles), ‘convergers’ (who 
prefer to work with things, rather than people) 
86 Truong Thi Nhu Ngoc. Journal of Science Ho Chi Minh City Open University, 7(4), 84-93 
and finally assimilators (who tend to focus on 
abstract ideas and are good at organizing and 
synthesizing data) (Kolb, 1984). Nevertheless, 
there is another school of thought claiming 
that viewing learning styles from a purely 
cognitive perspective can be misleading 
(Reid, 2007, p.27) and “learning style is just 
one aspect of cognitive style” (Mortimore, 
2008, p.6) and thus it should be considered as 
“the application of a person’s preferred 
cognitive style to a learning situation” 
(Mortimore, 2008, p.6). In fact, educators 
employ the term learning styles to mention 
“cognitive and interactional patterns which 
affect the ways in which students perceive, 
remember and think” (Scarcella, 1990, p.114). 
Moreover, since people’s styles are subject to 
how they internalize their surroundings, it is 
not necessary that learning styles are 
characteristically cognitive. In other words, 
“physical, affective, cognitive domains merge 
in learning styles” (Brown, 2000, p.114). In 
particular, some research has tried to take into 
account other factors rather than cognitive 
ones. For example, based on purely the 
senses, learning styles can be grouped into 
four categories: “read/write, auditory, visual 
and kinesthetic” (Fleming & Mill, as cited in 
Nilson, 2010, pp.232-233). Besides, there is a 
multi-perspective approach to classifying 
learning styles. This is to say that learning 
styles can be explored from four dimensions: 
sensory preference (e.g. visual, auditory, 
tactile and kinesthetic); personality types (e.g. 
extroverted versus introverted, active versus 
reflective, and thinking versus feeling); 
desired degree of generality (global versus 
analytic); and biological differences (e.g. the 
times of day that students perform best and 
the need of food and drink whilst learning) 
(Oxford, 2003, pp.3-7). 
2.1.3. Active 
“Active” is defined as “being involved in 
something; making a determined effort and 
not leaving something to happen by itself” 
(Oxford dictionary) or in other words, it 
means “taking positive actions in order to 
make something happen, rather than just 
hoping that it will happen” (Macmillan 
dictionary). Accordingly, an active person is 
someone “who is active, does a lot of different 
activities and has a lot of energy and interests” 
(Macmillan dictionary). 
2.1.4. Passive 
Meanwhile, “passive” is defined as 
“accepting what happens or what people do 
without trying to change anything or oppose 
them” (Oxford dictionary). Thus, a passive 
person will rarely take steps to react to things 
around them. Another definition of “passive”, 
which was found during the short interviews 
with my colleagues around Van Lang 
University campus is “not showing others any 
motive, interests or intent to join a certain 
activity”. 
2.2. Asian learning styles 
There has been much research into Asian 
students’ learning styles and strategies, both 
in those Asian countries themselves and 
“host” countries where Asian students study. 
For the most part, learners in a particular 
Asian country will show a bias towards a 
particular learning style. For example, 
Chinese, Korean and Indonesian choose 
auditory learning as their major learning style 
whilst Thai, Malay and Japanese students 
favor other methods (Saracho, 1997, p.18). 
Although Asian learners have varying 
learning styles, a few common factors can 
apply to all of them. 
2.2.1. Asian learners are cooperative 
One noticeable attribute belonging to 
Asian learners is their being more cooperative 
(Scarcella, 1990, p. 123). However, there is 
doubt as to whether this learning style is 
culturally or contextually affected. This is 
because some Asian countries such as China, 
Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Vietnam are 
influenced by Confucian heritage culture and 
ideologies, so they share some characteristics 
of a collectivist society, and thus learners in 
these countries tend to be group-oriented, 
 Truong Thi Nhu Ngoc. Journal of Science Ho Chi Minh City Open University, 7(4), 84-93 87 
confirming to norms and hierarchy (Biggs, 
1996; Church & Lonner, 1998). Interestingly, 
some studies have shown that Asian learners 
who have studied English for more than three 
years in the United States tend to favor group 
learning far less than those who have spent 
shorter periods of time there (Reid, 1987, 
pp.95-96). 
2.2.2. Asian learners are passive 
Another characteristic of Asian learning 
style is ‘passive learning’. It is generally 
assumed that Asian learners are inclined to 
adopt passive learning styles because they 
tend to keep quiet in the classroom. In 
addition, most people have a preconception 
that Asian learners really want to listen and 
obey. They appear passive because they want 
to be polite to teachers and they see 
knowledge as something their teachers 
transfer to them (Chalmers and Volet, 1997, 
pp.90-91). However, according to some 
research, many students do not want to adopt 
this role, i.e. being obedient listeners in class. 
They “do not want to sit in class passively 
receiving knowledge [but] want to explore the 
knowledge themselves” (Littlewood, 2000, 
pp.33-34). Furthermore, it is claimed that 
those who support these misconceptions do 
not take into account the cultural factors, 
cultural clashes and the students’ expectations 
(Chalmers and Volet, 1997, pp. 90-91). A 
recent investigation of Chinese students’ 
passive learning reveal that “passive learning 
behavior is related to the cultural background 
where one subsists [and that] they are afraid 
of making mistakes” (Yi, 2016, p.359). 
2.3. Vietnamese learning styles 
As a member of the Asian continent, 
Vietnam, to some extent, shares a culture 
similar to that of other countries in the region. 
This cultural heritage influences Vietnamese 
students’ learning styles and strategies. It is 
noticeable that in terms of history, Vietnam 
was dominated by the Chinese for nearly one 
thousand years. Vietnamese people value 
harmony, family, achievement and hierarchy 
(Triandis, 1995) because China’s Confucian 
ideologies are deeply ingrained in Vietnamese 
culture, which focus on virtue, respect, 
obedience and the relationship between ruler 
and subjects, father and son, older brother and 
younger brother, husband and wife, seniors 
and juniors. Moreover, in Vietnamese culture, 
self-respect and respectful attitudes are very 
important. This is expressed through 
politeness and obedience. Besides, 
Vietnamese people tend not to reveal their 
feelings and avoid conflict for fear that they 
will hurt others’ feelings. In the classroom, 
most Vietnamese students tend to keep quiet 
and instead of volunteering, they wait until 
called on to answer the question posed by 
their teacher. They will even avoid eye 
contact with their teacher and tend to copy 
down everything on the board. This is due to 
the belief that being quiet in class 
demonstrates respect towards the teacher, and 
they do not raise questions because of their 
beliefs that it is enough to receive knowledge 
transferred from their teachers (Nguyen, 
2002). However, this behavior is often 
“misunderstood as a passive or non-
cooperative attitude”(Nguyen, 2002). 
Furthermore, in line with the common 
stereotypes of Asian learners, Vietnamese 
learners employ more frequently “repetitive 
learning strategies” (Helmke and Tuyet, 
1999), but “repetition appears to have a 
different psychological meaning” (Helmke 
and Tuyet, 1999) for them. This is to say that 
the stereotype of being rote learners is not 
applied to Vietnamese learners. 
3. Method 
3.1. Participants and procedures 
The study was conducted at Van Lang 
University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. In 
order to investigate the Vietnamese first-year 
undergraduates’ passive learning style, a 
sample of 90 freshmen, who attended English 
class regularly, from five different 
technological grouped departments 
(Biotechnology, Environmental Technology, 
88 Truong Thi Nhu Ngoc. Journal of Science Ho Chi Minh City Open University, 7(4), 84-93 
Architecture, Civil Engineering and Interior 
Design) was employed. Data was collected 
using convenience sampling survey technique. 
Particularly, students were selected from 
diverse personal and academic backgrounds. 
No attempts were made to select random 
samples. Students are required to complete a 
questionnaire. Questions pertained to 
students’ self-assessment of their passive or 
active learning style, raising hands in class, 
responding to the teacher’s questions, fright of 
making mistakes in class and reasons for the 
fright and self-assessment of their introverted 
or extroverted personality. After that, 10 
students from the sample were conveniently 
selected to participate in the deep interviews 
in order to find out if their responses match 
their answers on the questionnaires. 
3.2. Data analysis 
The statistical analyses were conducted 
using the SPSS software program. To answer 
the question of whether students self-assess 
themselves as active or passive learners, when 
they raise hands in class, and what they do if 
they remain silent, descriptive statistics were 
reported. The data were obtained from 
students’ responses on the designed 
questionnaire. Regarding the fourth question 
with the main objective of finding out whether 
students are afraid of making mistakes and the 
reasons for this fright, the mean scores and the 
frequency of participants’ responses were 
calculated. To answer the fifth question of the 
study- finding the relationship between 
students’ passivity and personality, the 
Pearson Chi-square test was employed. 
4. Results 
4.1. Students’ self-categorization of their learning style 
Table 1 
Descriptive statistics results for students’ self-categorization of their learning style 
 Frequency Percent Valid Percent 
Cumulative 
Percent 
Valid Active 47 52.2 52.2 52.2 
Passive 34 37.8 37.8 90.0 
Neutral 9 10.0 10.0 100.0 
Total 90 100.0 100.0 
Slightly more than half of the participants 
(52.2 %) reported themselves to be active 
learners while only just more than one third of 
them (37.8%) categorized themselves as 
passive learners. An insignificant percentage 
(10%) self-assessed themselves as neither 
passive nor active learners. 
4.2. Cases in which students raise hands 
Table 2 
Descriptive statistics results for cases in which students raise hands 
 When I am sure of 
the answer 
Even when I am not sure of 
the answer 
Even when I don’t know 
the answer 
Frequency 68 35 3 
Percent 75.6 38.9 3.33 
 Truong Thi Nhu Ngoc. Journal of Science Ho Chi Minh City Open University, 7(4), 84-93 89 
About three-fourths (75.6%) of the students 
chose to raise hands when they are certain about 
the answer. Meanwhile, just only 3 cases 
questioned decided to raise hands even when 
they did not know the answer. There was only 
more than one third of the participants (38.9%) 
who chose to make educated guesses and raise 
hands when they are not sure of the answers. 
4.3. Students’ alternative ways of responding to the teacher’s question 
Table 3 
Descriptive statistics results for students’ alternative ways of responding to the teacher’s question 
 I do nothing 
and wait for 
my friends to 
answer the 
teacher’s 
question 
I think about 
the answer 
I think about 
the answers 
and write 
guesses on 
paper 
I ask my 
neighbor 
friends and 
discuss with 
them 
Others 
Frequency 6 40 18 45 0 
Percent 6.7 44.4 21.1 50 0 
Although nearly half of the participants 
(44.4 %) chose thinking about the answer 
while their teacher poses questions in class, 
half of them turned to their neighbor friends 
for help and discuss ideas with them. Only a 
negligible percentage of the students (6.7%) 
chose doing nothing and waiting for others to 
answer their teacher’s questions. Slightly 
more than one-fifth (21.1) decided to work 
independently, i.e. thinking about the answer 
and writing guesses on paper. 
4.4. Students’ fright of making mistakes in front of the class and reasons for th