In recent years, learning styles have become very popular in education and business worlds. A way to help everyone access the material in a preferred way to lead all to success.
Most people are dominant in one style, but they can still learn from lessons taught in other styles.
What are the 4 main learning styles?
There’s conversations about how many learning styles there are, but a consensus agrees on at least these four learning styles.
Remember, while one style is typically dominant for someone, they can still learn from the other styles.
Are you an audio dominant learner?
As an audio dominant learner, you learn information best when it’s told to you. You don’t need to hear the information live, recordings work as well.
As an audio dominant learner, your brain processes information from your auditory cortex best (I have a brief overview in this post!).
You’re primed for hearing new languages or different accents.
Are you a visual dominant learner?
As a visual dominant learner, you learn information best when it’s written out or set up as a diagram. Even if you don’t enjoy reading, the information from a textbook sticks better than that from a lecture.
As a visual dominant learner, your brain processes information from your visual cortex best (the occipital lobe!).
Are you a kinesthetic dominant learner?
As a kinesthetic dominant learner, you learn best when you can jump right into a task and learn on the go.
Oftentimes, kinesthetic learning is interchanged with tactile. Lessons can use tasks that overlap into both these areas causing confusion.
As a kinesthetic dominant learner, your brain processes information best from the frontal lobes (where gross motor skills are controlled).
Movement that requires your whole body or more than a small muscle is called gross motor. Writing or typing is a fine motor skill but lifting weights or walking are gross motor skills.
Are you a tactile dominant learner?
As a tactile dominant learner, you learn best when you can interact with a concept. Whether that’s writing out notes, drawing a picture, or solving a puzzle, you need to do something. Often you need to touch the concept to understand it too (which can make abstract concepts difficult!).
As a tactile dominant learner, your brain processes information best from the cerebellum (fine motor control) or the parietal lobe (where your nerves send their input).
How do you apply your learning style to new skills?
First, figure out what your dominant learning style is.
Think about the knowledge you’ve learned the easiest. Do you love podcasts, or blogs? Do you jump right into new tasks or prefer working with your hands?
Now that you know your dominant learning style, how can you change information you get in one format to your preferred learning style?
If you are visual but someone gave your verbal directions, you could write them down so you remember. It could be the same in reverse, read written directions out loud so your brain hears them.
How to apply your learning style to learning a foreign language
Now that you know your preferred learning style, let’s look at applying it to the skill of learning a new language.
I highly recommend choosing vocabulary or tasks that you do daily already as you’ll learn relevant vocabulary.
No need to learn the names of each plant if you don’t garden.
I also recommend starting with nouns over verbs, so you don’t have to worry about conjugating it correctly until you’re comfortable.
If you are an auditory learner?
Start with audio material!
Listen to podcasts in your target language, find online lectures, or change the audio on a streaming show to your target language. I know Netflix and Disney plus will do German!
If you are a visual learner?
Start with anything written or pictured.
Find books, or short stories or news articles. I recommended shorter written documents for new learners for reasons I cover in this post. (Hint: you’re trying to read at your new level, not your native language level).
As silly as it might be, toddler and kid books are perfect for this type of learner because they have both pictures to follow and simple words and sentences!
If you are a kinesthetic learner?
This style gets more difficult as you often need to mix styles.
Talk to yourself as you do relevant activities, “I’m stirring the pot” (as you cook food), “I’m walking”. It sounds silly but the practice will help your brain connect the words to the task.
If you are a tactile learner?
Similar to kinesthetic learning, you will need to mix styles.
Drawing pictures of new words or phrases can help your brain process the words. You’ll have started your own functional dictionary too!
Other ideas include writing in a journal words or phrases (even mixing languages) to practice.
Why multimodal learning styles can lead to more learning success
Multimodal learning is using more than one learning style. This leads to more success because it provides more opportunities for the material to be understood.
Let’s follow a metaphor to understand this better than just the scientific terms.
Walking in fresh snow leaves a path, like learning a new skill leaves a path in the brain.
Learning the skill once and never using it again risks it ‘melting’ and disappearing.
Starting the path (even in snow) and using it daily leaves a trail that is easy to find later.
The more a path is used, the clearer it is and easier to find every time.
Now, imagine you have created a path to your favorite reading spot in your backyard.
If you only have one path to that spot and a tree falls in the way, you’re stuck.
If you have 3-4 paths to that one spot, you can always get there.
Multimodal is the same idea with multiple learning styles.
If you can learn to use all learning styles (paths), then you create more opportunities for your brain to learn and master the skill.
This can apply to simple skills like tying a bow, to complicated ones like becoming fluent in a foreign language.
How to use Multimodal learning styles for foreign language learning
Some of the examples above already started mixing styles (talking to yourself while doing a task) but take it further.
And not every activity needs to use all 4 learning styles. Mixing at least 2 can help!
- Label objects in your home so you can see the connection while you use them (visual and tactile).
- Sing and dance to new songs or nursery rhymes in target language (audio and kinesthetic)
- Journal with new words from your target language (visual and tactile)
- Play I Spy (visual and audio)
The idea of the activity is to take what you normally do in a day and incorporate your new language and vocabulary as naturally as possible so you are more likely to use it.
In our home with 3 toddler boys, directions are often repeated in both English and German.
“Am Tisch” for sitting at the table for meals, ‘bitte’ for please, ‘danke’ for thank you.
I also repeat vocabulary in both languages when they ask for items (bread/Brot, water/Wasser, cookie/Kekse).
Repeating words works because they’re already asking for the item so I provide the word in both languages and they’re now asking for it using either word.
Regardless of the different learning styles, consider yours a starting point and use that to grow your skills.
Comment below what you think your learning style is!
