Determine Your Childs Learning Style

Is your child a visual, auditory or a kinesthetic learner? Does your child use tree diagrams; flow charts to remember important points? Or does your child read aloud while studying or is it that your child prefers to pace around while studying? Let’s find out.

Learning styles are nothing but the way in which people try to enhance their knowledge which may serve the purpose of recalling that information when needed. For instance writing examinations requires students to recollect all the information that they have learnt. Students and individuals both use learning styles either independently or in combination of 2 or more types. There are 3 basic learning styles practiced namely Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic. Learning is a never ending process whether you are a student or a working professional, knowing ones learning style will benefit everyone in the long run.

The Learning Styles:

The Visual Learner: these individuals usually use diagrams, schematics etc. to remember important points. They create charts to remember different types of information such as to indicate a process involved people make use of flow charts, a series of events are recorded via a cycle e.g. the rain water cycle or the food chain that it learnt at school level, tree diagrams are used to track an individual’s family tree, pyramids are used to identify and differentiate between the stages involved in an individual’s development, a funnel is used to indicate filtration of topics or a hierarchical representation of the points to be remembered in a particular order. People even learn via pictures or diagrams of a particular topic given in books. This is one of the reasons for the amount of diagrams given in text books on various topics. If your child uses any of these techniques to remember information then your child is probably a visual learner making use of his/her eyes predominantly to remember information. These individuals are more organized as they usually organize the matter studied. Know the how to determine your childs learning style.

The Auditory Learner: individuals who learn via sound are generally auditory learners. These individuals usually learn in class during the explanation given by the instructor, they listen to recordings of the topics that they have to learn or while they are studying; these individuals prefer reading aloud therefore their medium of learning is generally via hearing. Hence they have very good listening skills. Naturally they are able to follow instructions given to them orally well. These individuals are good at recitation and rapid learning. If your child reads aloud a lot then your child is predominantly an auditory learner.

The Kinesthetic or Tactile Learner: these are individuals who prefer to learn either by moving about or via physical touch. These are individuals who find it difficult to sit in one place to learn or look at images or diagrams of machines to learn. They prefer to tear apart the machine and fix it back; simply speaking they are usually practical learners who prefer to do the task manually and learn effectively. Such individuals are fast learners. If your child moves about or tears things apart to fix it then your child’s predominant learning style is one of a kinesthetic type.

Multiple Learning Styles used: Apart from the basic learning styles most individuals tend to make use of more than one style of learning or all three styles. Some individuals may use diagrams as well as recordings of a particular topic to aid them in learning; here two learning styles have been implemented namely visual and auditory learning styles. For example a psychology student may read aloud the memory improvement techniques and visualize these techniques to create an association between them. At other times individuals’ use all the3 styles of learning such as they visualize the diagrams, read aloud its features and have physical exposure to the object in question. For instance a geology student remembers the picture of the stone, reads aloud its characteristics and even picks up the similar stone in an attempt to explore it. This is an example of all the basic learning styles used such as visual, auditory as well as kinesthetic.

A lot of research shows that individuals making the uttermost use of as many senses as they can are better learners because they generally tend to remember the studied matter well via the various senses. Besides practically doing a task is a preferred teacher over visual or auditory learning alone. It is said that individuals learn better through practical exposure rather than theoretical learning thus ensuring that the matter is learnt.