Learning How To Learn

Some students spend as much as seventeen years in some form of education. Starting kindergarten at five years old and leaving university at twenty two. In that time a person may obtain school certificates and a college degree in their chosen subject. However, one thing that people will not be taught is learning how to learn.

At no time during your standard education are you taught or tested on what type of learner you are, how you learn best, what type of environment you thrive in and why you are particularly good a certain subjects and not so good at others.

People learn in every way they experience the world. We learn with our eyes, we learn with our ears, we learn with our nose, the movement of our body and touching things with our hands. Each person will learn better by experiencing the world in a specific way. Some of us are better when we are told something; others need to see something working before they are able to hold that new information in their brain.

Do You Know What Type of Learner You Are?

There are said to be three main types of learners in the world, auditory, visual and kinesthetic.

Auditory learners take in more information when someone explains it to them in detail. They would much rather here a lesson being taught in spoken word than having to read it from a text book. It is normal for these types of learners to be playing music in the background whilst they are studying.

Kinesthetic learners take in more information from hands on experiences. These types of people need to be involved in an activity that teaches them a certain lesson before they are able to fully comprehend the lesson.

Visual learners learn better by watching a demonstration, reading a book or looking at pictures. These people find reading maps and looking at charts and graphs stimulating but may struggle to pay attention to a teacher simply trying to explain a concept.

Of course most of us use a combination of all three of these techniques to learn, however, we all have a preference for one of them and it could be greatly beneficial to a person to know which of the three he or she has a natural predisposition for.

This knowledge of your learning style will help you to pick the type of education your personality will be most responsive too. Children and adults are often told and believe that they are bad at learning without ever really understanding what type of learner they are.

For example, a kinesthetic learner who needs to be physically involved in a lesson, an education system that is based on a teacher dictating a lesson orally will not be a stimulating environment for that person.

There are now many tests and articles online that will help you to understand what type of learner you are. These tests are designed by researchers and scientists and are successful at placing people into the right learning category.

This article was written by Gary Klungreseth from Beyond a Word, besides building art related ecommerce sites Gary also spends far too much time reading self help guides.