Thursday, January 8, 2009

Learning About Learning Styles Helps You To Learn Better

Each of us are made with a different set of intelligence. Some of us score well on the standard IQ test while others don’t fair so well. However, the IQ score may not be the only thing that measures our capacity to learn. There are different learning styles among the population. Gardner lists eight learning styles among the population. Once you discover the way that you learn best, you are well on your way to acquiring new and fascinating skills and information along the way.

The most commonly used learning style according to Gardner is the visual learner. This person learns best if he can visualize the concept. Some would say that it is impossible to visualize an idea, but it is not impossible. Many teachers create lesson plans that appeal to the people with visual learning styles simply by adding graphs and charts to the routine. Most students fair well after viewing a video that relates to the concepts covered in the lesson plan.

Kinesthetic learners learn by doing. The best way to teach these students is to engage them in every aspect of the activity. In order for these learning styles to benefit from the classroom, they need to be directly involved with producing. For example, in order for the student to understand the structure of a story, he can build a representation of the plot, characters, and so on. Another example of kinesthetic learning is producing recycle items to form a scrapbook or gift.

There are students who have musical learning styles. They benefit from listening to songs that have lyrics written in relation to the subject manner. The approach is commonly used in elementary schools but some older students can learn to music as well. Linguistic learners are among similar learning styles in that they taken in information that is arranged to enhance narrative and poetic elements.

Mathematical learners obviously learn best when information is associated with numbers. A history teacher can focus on dates to help the student remember. An English teacher would want to focus on meter in poetry. These learning styles can overlap very easily. Music teachers can employ math into their lesson plans while math teachers can incorporated music into theirs.

Some students do well listening to lectures. These students are among the learning styles that traditional teachers love. Auditory learners like to take in information through listening. This rare breed is usually remembered as the teacher’s pet years ago. Today, innovative new lesson plans that appeal to students with different learning styles have helped level the playing (or learning) field.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Amos,

    Just to add on to the above points in Learning. I realise (particularly here in Singapore), most people learn thru fear. Fear may push us to learn things but overall it does have a negative effect on our emotions. If you notice, the system in the world (esp: some schools, work place or parents) like to use fear as a form of learning. Example, a parent may threaten a child if he/she does not want to study, a boss may just sack an employee if the employee can't perform, a school teacher may punish a student if he/she does not hand in their homework on time. There are many reasons why some people react differently towards learning . It would be better if teachers, bosses or even parents in the world could learn to change their teaching styles to suit different individual. Rigid teaching does not aid rigid learning.

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