Learning. Life.

The Study Skills Series: 2. Use it or lose it (your learning style, that is)

Posted on 08 April 2008

Previous post in this series: 1. Know Thyself.

Now that you know your learning style, the next step is to use it. If you didn’t take the learning style test in part one, here it is again.

Auditory and read/write learners have it easiest in western education settings, which often involve listening, talking, writing and reading text books. With any luck your teachers, lecturers and tutors will add in activities for visual and kinaesthetic learners as well. But what is most important is what you do for your own study time: basically, the trick is to do activities which suit you best. Here are some ideas:

Visual: draw study notes that use pictures, diagrams, mind maps , flow charts instead of a list of steps, colours (highlight your notes, use different coloured pens and pencils), shapes, use whiteboards to draw pictures or mind-maps, draw diagrams or pictures, or colour-coded answers to answer possible questions.

Auditory: discussion groups, listen to lectures, download podcasts on the topic or create your own, make up ryhmes, poems or songs to memorise a list (and repeat them aloud), explain the concept or recite a list to the dog (they’re great listeners), answer possible questions aloud.

Read/Write: write study notes, read them and re-write them, write words that describe diagrams or pictures, use whiteboards to write lists and notes, write out answers to possible questions.

Kinaesthetic: physically do something – at all costs, don’t just read the textbook and your notes! Doing anything helps – use whiteboards to write or draw answers to possible questions, write study notes, type them on the computer. If you’re doing an applied subject, actually do the skills taught – so to learn Project Management, actually choose a really small project (like fixing the toaster) and do the techniques taught – create a Brief, do a plan, identify risks and monitor your progress against the plan.

There’s lots of ideas on the web for different learning styles: for example see here and here and here, or google “learning style”.

I’ve discussed the basic VARK styles, but there’s other classifications of learning styles – you can find out more about them in the articles above if you’re interested.

In the next few posts I’ll talk about some study methods that can benefit everyone, then move on to some tricks for when you’re actually sitting the test.