Am sure all of us remember some incidents in our life as though they have been video recorded in our minds ..Most of these are sometimes not even great incidents in your life but you still remember them.. A few weeks back I was trying to make a personal video for a friend of mine on his birthday.. While I was trying to recollect some of the experiences I suddenly started remembering very small incidents which I would have never expected to remember otherwise.. Was this because of some special reason in which I had learned these
Let me give another example..Have been a great cricket fan since my childhood and used to be a great fan of Sunil Gavaskar in my school days..I still remember so clearly reading about his scores in his first series in the West Indies in an old illustrated weekly magazine…I have been a greater fan of Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly and Sachin and have watched a lot of the great innings played by them..But I do not remember any of their scores the way I remember that of Gavaskar though I have hardly seen Gavaskar playing..Is this because of of a particular way that I had learned that I remember some things more clearly than others…Lets dig deep to understand a bit about Learning styles which can throw some light on this
The first learning style is the
1. Visual Learning style
If you are a visual learner you will be comfortable or rather you will learn faster under the following situations
- You understand better by seeing things
- You understand better by reading
- If things are explained with diagrams or flow charts you understand them better
- You are happy if something you are listening to is written down by you as per your understanding
If you learn things faster under the above conditions then you are Visual learner..For a visual learner to improve their learning productivity it would be ideal to do the following
- Try and sit in front of the class or the session ..If its an online session do the same properly on a laptop where you get fully visibility of what is happening
- Take notes of whatever you find interesting
- Use highlighters and paste it notes to highlight the areas that you find interesting
This could probably explain why I was able to remember all of those Gavaskar scores even today though I had only read about them …
2. Auditory Learning Style
If you are auditory learner your will be more comfortable in learning or you will learn faster under the following situations
- You understand things better when things are told to you
- You prefer listening to the news than reading them
- You are a good listener
- Benefit from active class participation
- Get distracted by too much noise
- Understand better in lecture classes
- Talk to self
- See Big ideas vs details
- Get distracted by Visual Overload
If you relate to the above kind of learning then you are an auditory learner and listed below are some of the ways to improve your learning skills or rather improve on the way you can learn
- Study in small groups or better understand it yourself first and then take to small groups
- Explain something to someone..This works for all but is magical for auditory learners
- Read out loudly to yourself
- If you are thinking about an idea talk to yourself to let the idea sink in
- Lecture classes suites u best
I had this amazing skill of remembering things by heart while I was in school..I lost that skill as I grew up..Looking back today I realise while in school I used to read out loudly whatever I was learning ..maybe that is what used to help me remember everything exactly as I had read..
Kinesthetic Learning
If you are kinesthetic learner your will be more comfortable in learning or you will learn faster under the following situations
- You learn faster when the learning involves participation in an activity
- You learn better when you need to build models as part of the learning process
- You do good in lab classes
- You like to work in groups
- You tend to remember what you did more than what you read or what you heard
- Do you keep moving your feet or hands while you are learning something
- Does chewing gum help you to concentrate better
If these resemble the way in which you like to learn best then you are a kinesthetic learner ..Am listing below some of the best ways to get maximum output for your learning period
- Keep a clock on your desk as you will find it difficult to sit for longer periods of time..While this is true for all types of people this makes out magically for kinesthetic learners
- Try to keep the reading material portable so that you can move around or stand up etc if you feel so
- Maybe have a chair which allows you to move around a bit
- Relate whatever you are learning to your real life experiences ..For eg if you are learning about mergers and acquisitions look up for actual mergers and acquisitions which are happening now
- Study in groups
Though there are a few more learning types which are talked about Visual, Audible and Kinesthetic are the most popularly accepted learning styles ..It also doesn’t mean that you can have only one style of learning..You could have adapted yourself to learning differently under different circumstances..
We also come across people who are brilliant in certain subjects because the way that is being taught perfectly suites that persons learning style while they will be average in the balance subjects..I also realize today that while I used to struggle with languages in my student days today I manage to converse in multiple languages with ease..So try and figure out your learning style and see how things change …
