Learning Styles and Motivations for Practicing English as a Foreign Language: A Case Study of Role-play in Two Ecuadorian Universities Jhonny S. Villafuerte Universidad Laica Eloy Alfaro de Manabí, Manta, Ecuador; The Basque Country University, Bilbao, Spain Maria A. Rojas Universidad Tecnica de Machala, Machala, Ecuador Sandy L. Hormaza Universidad Laica Eloy Alfaro de Manabí, Manta, Ecuador; Universidad Católica de Murcia, Spain Lourdes A. Soledispa Universidad Laica Eloy Alfaro de Manabí, Manta, Ecuador; Universidad de Rioja, La Rioja, Spain Abstract—This action research studies the Ecuadorian university students’ learning styles and motivations to practice English as a Foreign Language through Role-play. The sample is composed of 158 students from two national universities located in the Coastal region of Ecuador. They took part of Role-play practices in the English as a Foreign Language course during 2016-2017. The instruments applied were the Social Software Survey Used with Undergraduate Students; and a questionnaire designed ad hoc, by the research team named Likert Questionnaire Learners’ Motivations for Practicing English through Role-play. The results show participants' openness to cooperative learning and task-based learning. It is concluded that the learning styles that participants prefer is working in groups; situation that favours the implementation of English as a foreign language practices through role-play. Index Terms—English language, Motivation for learning, higher education, role-play, Ecuador I. INTRODUCTION To Jacobs and McCafferty (2006) acquiring a foreign language improves professional’s competences in any field of knowledge. Thus, Ecuadorian university students ought to reach a proficiency level of a foreign language, before they finish their higher education (LOES, 2011). In consequence, it is a priority to develop teaching and learning strategies to support students to reach this expected knowledge. Literature offers abundant works about English as Foreign Language (EFL) teaching and learning process that include approaches as Task-Based Learning and Teaching (TBLT) Hyland (2007), Jackson and Back (2011) and Collaborative Learning (CL) (Johnson, Johnson, and Smith,1991; Tram, 2014). However, in the current Ecuadorian context, it is necessary to explore in deeper the contributions of those approaches to strength the feasibility of educational reforms in concern to the Extensive English Language Teaching project, from the 2 nd ., grade of primary education to the university level (the Republic of Ecuador, 2014). Scholars as Zhang (2010); Jackson and Back (2011); and Perez (2015), affirm that current higher educational programs require of innovative strategies to support learners’ English language acquisition proces s through more healthy and sociable activities. Zambrano and Valverde (2013) proposed RP as a key educational strategy for strengthening learners’ English communicational skills, convinced of “Role-play offers social opportunities to learn a language” (Rojas, 2017, p. 22). Finally, RP exposes the learner to a complex balance (Tran, 2014; Lee, 2014) which includes their personality, learning styles, and motivation for learning (Cevallos, Intriago, Villafuerte, Molina and Ortega, 2017; East, 2017). In consequence, the research questions that guide this work are the following: a) Do learning styles of university students favor their language practice through RP? b) Are the university students motivated to execute EFL practice using RP? II. LITERATURE REVIEW ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 8, No. 6, pp. 555-563, June 2018 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0806.01 © 2018 ACADEMY PUBLICATION