Different Learning Styles

Taking these statistics into consideration, the teachers of today need to learn new ways of helping their students learn to become life-long learners. If students haven’t learnt the art of learning, then they are probably not going to be able to choose a suitable career path or be trained effectively within their respective fields.

Each and every one of us receives new information on a daily basis. Understanding this information and processing it will take us a long way towards become life-long learners.

Each and every person is different from the other. Each of us perceives the world in a different way from the other. These perceptions of ours shape up what we think – how we make our decisions, how we prioritize things – and so on. What’s more, our individual perceptions also help to define our natural learning styles and strengths.

So, since all of us are not basically alike, then when we approach a certain situation or a learning task, remember that not all of us will benefit from the same approach. Each and every individual will have his or her own set of unique learning strengths as well as weaknesses. So, it is very important for teachers to use a variety of methods to reach out to their students. It is also very important for teachers to first understand what the different learning styles are in the first place!

Different Learning Styles
Each and every one of us has different ways of learning and processing information. You probably didn’t realize this earlier because you must have attended one of those regular schools where all the teachers taught in the same way.

Most of our teachers talked to us (droned on and on), and sometimes we answered their questions. Most of us had our regular pencil and paper tests that required us to memorize everything that we were taught without really understanding much. Most schools tend to teach in this way and don’t really encourage the students to lean in their own unique ways.

There are so many different learning styles and ways to classify them in, namely: perceptual modality, personality patterns and information processing.

• Perceptual modalities – this is all about defining our biological reactions to our surroundings and the way in which we process information. This learning style helps us learn what our perception style is and we can then seek out information and process it in the way that we perceive it. Teachers should focus on using these techniques in order to reach out to all the students.
• Personality patterns – this focuses on emotions, values and attention. Studying the difference in these will allow us to predict the way we will think, feel and react to different situations.
• Information processing – this distinguishes between the way we think, sense, remember information and solve problems. Each and every one of us has a distinct way of perceiving, processing, organizing and retaining different information.

Perceptual Modality
This refers to the way our minds take in different information. From this we get that the different learning styles are auditory, kinesthetic, visual and tactile. In addition, there are seven categories of humans, which the verbal-linguistic types (sensitive to the order and meaning of words), the musical type (sensitive to melody, tone, pitch and rhythm), the logical-mathematical type (processes information by reasoning and recognizing orders and patterns), the spatial type (perceives the world realistically and then tries to transform and re-create certain aspects of the world), the bodily- kinesthetic type (handles objects skillfully and uses the body skillfully), the interpersonal type (understands relationships and people), and lastly, the intrapersonal type ( tries to enter into another persons emotional life in order to understand the person).

Each and every one of us will rely on all or a combination of these modes to process information and learn at an unconscious level, but all of us are probably consciously aware of what modes we prefer to use. We learn through all our senses, but tend to favor one over the rest. Thus, we can safely say that we learn by sight (visually), by sound (auditorally), by moving (kinesthetically), and by touch (tactilly).

• Visual learners – Visual learners tend to learn better by seeing things. Images and pictures will help them understand information and ideas better than long explanations. A drawing will probably help them more than a discussion on the same topic would. A visual learner will always create a mental image in his or her mind.
• Auditory learners – There are two categories of auditory reader – the listeners and the speakers. These type of learners learn faster through spoken messages. Some auditory learners need to hear their own voices in order to understand information. The listeners are the types that will always do well in school. They tend to remember things that were said to them and then make up their own information. They also carry mental images of dialogues, which in turn help them to remember a lot of what they learnt.
• Kinesthetic learners and tactile learners – Kinesthetic learners will always sense the movement and position of what they are working on. Tactile learners on the other hand prefer to learn by touch. They learn increasingly fast through practical work in labs and in classroom. These types don’t generally do well in traditional schools because such schools don’t provide them with right opportunities to do practical work. Both these types perceive information through the nerve endings in the skin and also through muscles, joints and tendons.

As a learner, the most important thing you can do is to learn about all of these different learning styles, identify which category you belong to and learn from the strong points of the other categories.

What’s more, educators and teachers all over the world need to get together and design programs and courses that address all the different learning styles. Instead of using the same traditional, old-school way of teaching, it would be more appropriate to present information to students as they would best learn.