AbstractA s the majority of students are often regarded by teachers and consider themselves as passive learners, empirical evidence should be provided to help both teachers and students gain better understanding of the learning styles and approaches being employed by most Vietnamese students of English language. This paper examines(1) the widely held misconception of a passive language learner from the students’ perspectives and (2) the creativity of the ‘presumably’ passive language learners. Non-first-year students learning English as a foreign language at Ton Duc Thang University (TDTU) responded to a survey of five questions showing their perceptions and behaviors with reference to their learning styles. The students’ creative performance through a translation test were also evaluated. The results suggest that there is a real need to help students reconsider what a passive learner is since the students’ perceptions and their learning behaviors are in consistent, meanwhile they could produce a relatively high level of creativity in their translation works.