Learning Styles

How many times have you been told that you need to stop bouncing your leg in class and start paying attention to a lecture, however interesting it may be? Or maybe you’re reading a chapter for your homework and eventually, your eyes just glaze over because all the words blend. It’s happened to all of us, so what’s the cause of our brains not doing what we want them to do? Chances are that those activities didn’t match our learning styles. Everyone’s brain thinks differently, which makes some things easier to process and some things harder through different ways of teaching. It shows that learning is a personalized journey; no two individuals learn in exactly the same way. Our learning styles vary widely shaped by our personal experience.

 Before we dive in, it is important to address some conflicting ideas within the research on learning styles.  Bjork et al. (2008) explain that while incorporating every individual’s learning preferences all at once in a large setting is proven ineffective (for example in a classroom with 30 students), the learning preferences of an individual do impact their learning and is not disputable. Therefore, we will mainly be focusing on individual preference as opposed to any arguments that focus on using learning theories in regard to more than one person at a time. When learners are aware of and can choose what kind of materials or experiences they prefer, they are far more likely to stay engaged with the subject for longer and retain the material better. That said, there are four basic categories of learning styles that we’ll be talking about today; auditory, visual, reading/writing, and kinesthetic.

People with a preference for auditory learning are considered better learners if the material is presented in the form of a lecture, podcast, song, or any other possible auditory input. A possible optimal educational style for them would involve maximizing the auditory input in a target language, like watching television or listening to music.

Where auditory learners might thrive with few visual embellishments – say in classroom dialogues, lectures, etc… -, visual learners tend to drift towards learning that incorporates, well, visual elements. They might prefer seeing graphs and tables with tangible numbers over just discussion. They might enjoy watching videos or movies about a certain subject because to them, having visual stimulus is integral to efficient learning.

The third and fourth styles are generally grouped into the more ‘tactile’ category where students can actively engage and not just passively receive information. The reading and writing preferences are exactly what they sound like. Maybe you are an avid note-taker while reading your textbook, or you like to write the information out to help you learn.

Kinesthetic Learning Style

Lastly, the kinesthetic preference emphasizes the use of projects, non-traditional learning material, and active learner contribution. This could look like creating a posterboard, art project, food, or diagram to learn and display knowledge. In terms of active learning, something like an atomic model for a chemistry class could work very well so that kinesthetic learners can take it apart, put it together, and see hands-on how it functions. While categorization and labels can be helpful, it is important to remember that “Learning styles are not dichotomous” (Oxford, 2003). Ehrman (1996 as cited in Oxford, 2003) says, “Few if any people could be classified as having all or nothing in any of these categories”. Humankind is inherently diverse, and that extends to how our brains function. If there are eight billion people on earth, there are eight billion combinations of learning preferences. Labels can help us group similar people, but they are certainly not the end-all be-all.

Before we move on to the activity for this section, I have a question for you. Why is it important to know your learning preferences? If you already have an answer in mind, great, and if not, I encourage you to pause your reading and take a second to think. Now that you have an idea, I want to provide my own.

Knowing ourselves and how we function is the best way to optimize our learning. While we might not be given tasks in classes that utilize our best strategies, “When left to their own devices and if not encouraged by the teacher or forced by the lesson to use a certain set of strategies, students typically use learning strategies that reflect their basic learning styles” (Ehrman & Oxford, 1989; Oxford, 1996a, 1996b). If we can make the transition to actively create content that aligns with our learning strategies and our psychological makeup, our learning could be more efficient. In this activity, we will be discovering our learning styles. You probably already have an idea of what your learning style is, but this might reveal something that you might not have thought about. See you on the other side!

Learning Style Quiz Link

Before we continue, if you would like further information on what certain learning styles mean, please watch this video. This is optional viewing, but it is more in depth  information about learning styles.

If you think the quiz didn’t identify your correct learning style, you know yourself better than an online quiz. While this can help give you an idea of where your preferences might lie, you ultimately need to decide if it is true or not. Now that we know more about our learning styles, let’s brainstorm how to implement them into our independent language learning. This will serve as your guide for your future learning endeavors so that you can get the most out of your brain.

Planning out activities and learning methods for yourself can be extremely helpful. Maybe reading the textbook chapter while sitting on your bed doesn’t work, but walking around a park listening to the same chapter as an audiobook does. Hopefully, by taking this time to get to know yourself better, you can improve your future learning by choosing content or activities that are meaningful and engaging to you.