Learning Styles

I have to admit, I've never paid that much attention to Learning Styles, thinking more about Teaching Styles (i.e. my own!). But recently, I've found it coming up more and more, thinking about a class that I'm struggling with. I think they are probably mostly kinaesthetic learners, and I'm planning on spending some time on Monday finding out.

Learners can be categorise as mainly:

Visual - Approximately 29% of people have a visual learning preference.

Auditory - Approximately 34% of people have an auditory learning preference.

Kinaesthetic - Approximately 37% of people have a kinaesthetic learning preference.

Most people are a mixture of these. The problem with English is that we tend to teach in a very Auditory - Visual kind of way, and that might not be the best for our learners.

In addition, learners tend to process information in one of two ways:

Wholists - process information in wholes
Analysts - process information in parts.

In addition, there is the whole realm of Multiple Intelligences, a theory posited by Howard Garner. According to him, there are eight different intelligences:

Interpersonal - communicating with others
Intrapersonal - for self-discovery and analysis
Linguistic - for reading, writing and speech
Mathematical/logical - for maths, logic and systems
Visual/spatial - for visualisation and art
Bodily/kinaesthetic - for touch
Musical - for rhythm and music
Naturalist - for studying and classifying the natural world.

Finally, there is the Honey and Mumford Learning Styles questionnaire, which will help you work out if you are an Activist, Reflector, Theorist or Pragmatist.

Try some of these links for questionnaires to help you to work out your and your students' preferred learning styles.

http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire
http://www.brainboxx.co.uk/a2_learnstyles/pages/roughandready.htm
http://www.brainboxx.co.uk/a3_aspects/pages/VAK_quest.htm