Learning Style

A few posts back I mentioned the importance of knowing your own preferred learning style. I was speaking in generalities, but I now have access to a tool that allows me to pin-point my own major, minor, and negligible learning styles: Reid's Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire. After completing and scoring the self-guided questionnaire, I found that of the six styles identified by Reid (i.e. visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile, group, and individual), I have 3 major learning style preferences: visual, kinesthetic, and individual. The other three are minor learning style preferences and I have no "negligible" style preferences (this means I could probably learn well with any of the styles categorized).

I believe this measurement of my learning style preference is quite accurate. Though, while completing the questionnaire, I debated how accurate it would be since I believe my learning style preferences vary according to the task-at-hand and the learning environment. I prefer to study and do rote tasks on my own (since I feel I perform faster than others) yet I would prefer group work in a classroom that required a lot of role-playing. I think this is where is where the concept of "major" and "minor" learning preferences is really justifiable. My first instinct is to work as an individual unless a situations calls, or is more appropriate, for group work.

Without having put a label on it before, I knew that I had to write down information in order to remember. According to Reid's questionnaire, this is a characteristic of a Visual learner. Interestingly, a Visual learner can often learn alone with just a book, since not much auditory input is required for learning. Taking this into perspective for learning my LCTL, Yaqui, it would seem self-guided learning might be an appropriate venue to put into practice my visual learning style. However, I have found almost the opposite: while I still learn best by writing out information, I feel that auditory input may well aid my acquisition more so than just visual learning. Additionally, through my self-guided study, my kinesthetic learning preference is not being met (particularly without a mentor) since I do not have much, if any at all, opportunity to learn the language through role-playing or group activities as in a classroom. When I have the resources available, I do believe I prefer to learn alone; yet due to the scarcity of Yaqui language resources, a group learning setting could possibly provide more ways to learn the language.

Nel (2008) provides a summary of the research on student learning styles and addresses the issue of whether there is a good language learner style. While no one style has been shown to be more advantageous than another, good language learners are more field-independent. That is, they are able to separate relevant material from its context and break down problems into components (i.e. not looking at the "big picture" but rather the parts/variables that make it up). Moreover, good language learners are capable of adapting their learning styles depending on the learning environment. It would appear that my questionnaire results indicate that I could use a variety of learning styles and therefore may well be a good language learner. I had previously thought that I was a "good" language learner, though this experience with Yaqui has challenged my beliefs. However, I do believe a good language learner may not have any negligible learning style preferences and could therefore adapt to the learning environment by using one of his/her other styles. On the other hand, a good language learner might by able to "build up" a negligible style as well.

As Nel points out, most students, myself included, do not fall into one polar side of learning style dichotomies. Rather, they are on a continuum and often have more than one style (or parts from more than one style). Looking at my own results, I can see that certain characteristics from different learning styles actually make up my own preferred style- and it is highly dependent on the learning context.

Nel also outlines the areas language instructors should consider in order to maximize the success of individual learning styles. Offering different stimuli and making the learning/teaching environment more attuned to different learning styles are two suggestions that I believe are imperative to foster successful learning across individual learning styles. I was once an assistant for a Spanish conversation course for high school students. The instructor of the course noticed that a few students who were quite silent in the classroom had a talent for drawing. She adjusted future group activities to accommodate these students' learning style and found that they were more expressive in oral communication when they had created a storyboard to coincide with their verbal output. As a foreign language instructor, I believe it is essential to play into the various learning styles by varying activities, assessments, and even the environment of learning.

Nonetheless, it would be interesting if a reliable model for learning styles could be developed to determine if a particular style was most conducive to language learning (which may vary from language to language as well).