Learners' Strategies & Learning Styles

The activities and techniques you use to learn are called learning strategies. These strategies tend to fall into various groups, which are considered to represent a more abstract set of tendencies that we call learning styles. Learning styles are convenient shortcuts for talking about patterns of what an individual is likely to prefer as a learner. For example, some people like to follow a syllabus or textbook chapter by chapter when they learn. This approach is referred to as sequential style because people with this style like to follow a sequence of predictable or predetermined steps to get where they are going. The contrasting style is called random; people with a random learning style tend to prefer to follow whatever thread of learning seems relevant or interesting at the time. Their sequence is not predictable, often not even to them. So random and sequential are styles, or habitual, general approaches for which the observable behaviors are certain specific learning strategies, such as looking for patterns within a mass of information (random), remembering events by putting them into chronological order (sequential). Keep in mind that no one can actually see a learning style. Instead, we see behaviors that seem to have something in common and we infer a style. Sensory preferences are sometimes called kinds of memory (as in “visual memory”), KAV(referring to the types of sensory preferences: kinesthetic, auditory, or visual), and perceptual styles. They are the physical channels through which students take in and perceive new information: ears, eyes, and touch, and directly relate to the perceiving (or attentional) aspects of cognition. The typical categories used by specialists in learner differences are visual, auditory, and motor – these are described below. Sometimes, though, you might also hear the word haptic. Haptic learners use their hands and their sense of touch to learn through how things feel to them. Visual learners acquire new vocabulary primarily through sight; they understand grammar better when they can read about it in a book. There are  two kinds of visual learners: imagists and verbalists. When imagists hear or read something in a foreign language (or in their native language, for that matter), they see a picture of what they have heard or read. In other words, they make an image of it. They understand through that image, and they typically store the information in their memory as an image. The image, then, is more likely to help them recall the words or grammar than is a verbal prompt. Verbalists, on the other hand, see words. If they hear the French word, soleil, for example, they will not necessarily see a picture of the sun; that is what the imagists would do. Rather, the verbalists will see the letters s-o-l-e-i-l in their heads. Verbalists store the letters, and when they have difficulty remembering a word, they can usually remember the initial letter or some of the letters in it. They do not associate the word with an image but with the letters that compose it. For verbalists, reading is a key to remembering – much more so than with imagists. Verbalists, not surprisingly, are much better at correct spelling (and very likely the winners of most spelling bees are verbalists or people who have learned the kinds of memory strategies that come naturally to verbalists). Visual learners can cope with and even take advantage of non-visual activities that come up in the classroom by applying strategies that are used by auditory and motor learners or by turning an auditory activity into a visual one. Auditory learners acquire new information through sound; they hear grammatical endings, and they associate new words with sounds they already know. Even pitch, tempo, and intonation provide them with clues to the meaning of what they are hearing, and they are very quick to learn to make these differences when they are speaking the foreign language. Aural learners learn by listening to others. They tend not to take notes in class because they usually remember what they hear. They are usually pretty good at listening comprehension tasks; can figure out either the essence of broadcasts and films or the details contained in them – or both, depending on their learning style; and have generally pretty good accents. Oral learners learn by listening to themselves. Oral learners, then, like to talk. Talking and hearing themselves talk is often essential to their ability to comprehend information and store it in memory. Whereas aural learners need auditory input, oral learners need auditory output, which becomes their input. Simply put, they get to learn by hearing when they hear themselves speak. As classmates, they can be perceived to be interruptive because they talk “all the time.” Most auditory learners have varying tolerances for visual input. Since much of language learning is visual, with a good half of the activities that students are asked to accomplish being reading and writing, chances are that you will have to learn to cope with non-auditory requirements. You can do this by using some of the same strategies that visual learners use or by turning a visual requirement into an auditory one. An example of the former would be to learn how to encode sounds into letters and words. One way to facilitate this is to ask your teacher or a native speaker to record some of your reading texts for you – then read them as you listen. To turn visual activities into auditory ones, try reading aloud or subvocalizing (saying the words to yourself under your breath); you can use this latter strategy not only when you are reading but also when other students are answering in class. Motor learning is sometimes called kinesthetic learning. While the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, doing so does not represent an accurate description of learning style information. Kinesthetic preferences are only one kind of motor learning. Quite obviously, given the terminology, motor learners acquire new information through movement. Kinesthetic learners are in perpetual motion. They use their entire body for learning. In language classes, role plays and total physical response activities (those that require some kind of physical response, such as carrying out commands) help them learn and remember new vocabulary and grammar. Mechanical learners like to write. They also like to draw and doodle. In class, their fingers are rarely idle. They learn by taking notes, writing compositions, and even copying.

The learners were classified in the following way:

1.  Analogue learners gravitate to the use of metaphors, analogies, and conceptual links among units and their meanings. These learners tend to have a clear preference for learning material in meaningful context.

2.  Digital learners take a more surface approach, dealing with what they can see or hear directly. Their understanding is generally literal and under the kind of conscious control typical of ectenic learners.

Sometimes, it is important to use metaphoric approaches; this can be especially important when learning in country where synoptic/analogue learners may have a distinct advantage.

1.  Concrete learners use real materials and examples for learning. They are hands-on, experiential learners. The learning (input, materials, procedures, etc.) are generally consciously controlled either by the learner or, more frequently, by the teacher.

2.  Abstract learners, on the other hand, prefer pictures and explanations. They learn through lecture and concept. They accept theory well. They are, in essence, “book learners.” Some are able to apply the book learning to real life easily; others have more difficulty doing so. If you are a synoptic/field independent learner, you will probably instinctively notice plural forms wherever you encounter them, without consciously searching for them. You may also find yourself unconsciously selecting plural forms that are new to you from among all those that you encounter and then organizing the different forms so that they are easier to deal with. If you are field dependent, then you may rely on your textbook, teacher, or syllabus to organize these forms prior to your setting about learning them. One of the most important functions of syllabi and instructional guidance is to point out the things that matter; if you are an ectenic/field dependent learner, you can use these items to good avail. Field sensitive learners use the full language environment for comprehension and learning. Field insensitive learners do not focus on the language environment but rather pay attention to a particular language element being studied. Classrooms tend to be information-poor environments. This can be a problem for field-sensitive learners. If you are a field-sensitive learner, you can take advantage of your learning preference by finding opportunities to overhear the teacher talk to others, listening to native speakers talking on tapes or videos, reading, noticing posters, overhearing the questions and conversations of other students, and the like. All of these opportunities will provide you with the rich source of information, replete with all kinds of additional details and content, i.e. a “field” of information, that you may need for understanding new words and grammatical usages that you have not seen before. Learners who prefer global processing attend to an image as a whole (as opposed to its parts). For them, the most important thing is seeing and understanding the “big picture.” Informally, we often distinguish between people who “see the forest” and those who “see the trees.” Global learners are the ones who see the forest and may miss the trees. They process information in a “top down” manner, focusing on overall meaning first and details later – if at all. If they miss enough details, the meaning that they “invent” can stray quite far from reality. Students who display particular processing are attentive to discrete items and details. They are aware of the various kinds of “trees,” rather than the forest per se. Their processing of information is “bottom up,” seeing the form first and the general meaning second. Impulsive learners think and respond nearly simultaneously. They tend to complete their work more quickly but often with less accuracy than reflective learners. They often give facile answers. Reflective learners think, then respond. They tend to show more involved and deeper levels of thinking. Reflective learners more often than not work accurately, but their slowness sometimes means that work is incomplete.

In language classrooms, impulsive learners generally do well. In language learning, however, impulsivity can lead to a lack of monitoring (paying attention to what you are saying). As a result, if you are an impulsive learner, you may develop ingrained habits of speaking with mistakes that you ignore, and this can lead to your being “stuck” at lower levels of proficiency. We call this phenomenon “fossilization.” If you find accuracy to be a problem for you, you might deliberately work on building a monitor by recording your own talk, then listening to it, correcting it, and saying it again correctly. Inductive learners form hypotheses, then test them. They may only rarely seek teacher support. They enjoy seeing a multitude of examples and intuiting what the rule should be and sometimes cannot get enough examples during class. Deductive learners study the rules, then practice applying them to examples. They prefer to get these rules either from the teacher or from references. Like sequential processing, deductive processing can save some cognitive load (the amount of material the brain is expected to process simultaneously) because the learner does not need to work out the rules. If you are a deductive learner, you may experience difficulty sometimes in working with authentic materials, especially where you do not know all the words and have to “guess” some of them from context. One military officer we know who was in a foreign-language program insisted that he “did not become a captain by guessing.” This is probably true, but some guesswork will be essential in foreign language classrooms. You can use what you already know to guess better. If you are reading a text and do not know a key word, think about the subject matter and what you have read so far in the text. Based on that, what do you think the word might mean? If this does not help, think about word composition; can you guess now? If you are still lost as to meaning, let the word go. Read ahead in the text; it might become clear then. If you have access to a dictionary, you will probably find yourself wanting to look it up. That is okay. Random learners generally prefer to develop their own approach to language learning and organize assignments in their own way, often completing them in no apparent (to the outsider) order. (Likewise, in reading a novel, many random learners report reading the ending first or skipping out in the book. Extreme random learners have sometimes reported even reading the ending of a mystery before reading the story itself.) Sequential learners generally prefer to receive materials that have been organized in some fashion: a syllabus, lesson plan, or programmed tutorial. While they may adjust the organization to fit their own needs, these learners tend to feel uncomfortable when handed a collection of authentic materials with no guidance on what to do or how to use.  them. (In reading a novel, most sequential learners report that they prefer to start on the first page and read the subsequent pages in order; they generally do not understand why anyone would want to read the end of a mystery before reading the story itself.) Synthesizers assemble something new (knowledge, models, stories, ideas, etc.) from known information. They do this by using the given pieces to build new wholes, e.g. making up new words, using typical roots and prefixes or rewriting a paragraph from a different point of view, using the sentences already there as models. Synthesizers typically put together disparate ideas easily and not only make sense out of them but also develop new models with them. Analyzers disassemble known information into its component parts and are usually aware that the “big picture” is composed of small pieces. They like rules because they can break them down into component parts and use them to explain phenomena. They like word study because they can break the words into etymological pieces: roots, stems, affixes.

In language classes, if you are a synthesizer, you may well want to use or even play with new words or features of the language as wholes, rather than take them apart. So, faced with a list of new words, make up sentences or stories that go with these words to help remember them.  If you are an analyzer, on the other hand, you will probably want to zero in on what needs to be figured out, so that you can understand it and feel confident that it is “yours” before you try to use it. Some things you can try doing in order to use new words is to apply contrastive analysis.

Bibliography:

1.    Brown, H.D. (2000): Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. White Plains, NY: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. Gass,

2.    S.M. I L. Selinker. (2008): Second Language Acquisition. An Introductory Course. New York: Routledge. VanPatten,

3.    Leaver, B.L; Ehrman, M; Shekhtman, B. (2005): Achieving Success in Second Language Acquisition. CUP

4.    B. i J. Williams. (red.) 2007: Theories in Second Language Acquisition. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

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