What’s Your ‘Learning Style’ – Visual, Auditory or Tactile?

With the SA1 exams drawing nearer, students are likely to be gearing up for the challenging month ahead. After round-the-year study sessions, the time has now come to carry out revisions and refresh all the topics so that they can be on your finger tips during the exams.

To make your learning and revision effective, it is best to customize your study plan and revision notes based on your learning style.

Are you wondering what ‘learning style’ means?

Learning Style refers to the characteristic ways in which an individual acquires, perceives and processes information. In simple words, a dominant style that helps you process and learn information faster and in a better manner can be classified as your learning style.

It is therefore important to note that there are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, ‘good’ or ‘bad’ learning styles, but only preferred learning styles. On the basis of their learning styles, learners can be broadly classified into three types i.e. Visual learners, Auditory learners and Tactile learners, each with their respective learning styles.

Which category do you belong to?

Here are a few points that will give your some more insight on the prime characteristics of the different types of learners and help you customize your revision notes according to the style that suits you the best.

Visual Learners

If you are a visual learner, you grasp a concept best by looking at graphics, watching a demonstration, or reading about it. Your mind tends to understand and remember things by sight. While learning, you can picture things in your head, and hence you learn best by using methods that are primarily visual.

So, while preparing their revision notes, visual learners are advised to supplement their learning with pictures, charts, maps, graphs etc. Always keep in mind that you need to SEE things, and not just hear them, to learn well.

Tips for Visual Learners

1. Use bright colours to highlight important text in the revision notes.

2. Use flashcards to learn new words and formulae.

3. To speed up the pace of revision and make learning effective, you can also try visualize the given information as a picture or an image. This will help you retain information for a longer period of time and will aid in better recall value during the exam.

Resources for Visual Learners: Revision Notes | Textbook Solutions | Practice Questions

Auditory Learners

Such learners prefer listening to concepts being explained rather than reading about them in text books. If you are one of this set, then you prefer classroom discussions over individual study sessions. You feel the need for an absolutely quiet place for attempting to process key information into the memory. You feel uncomfortable in handling distractions created by noisy surrounding.

Keep in mind that you need to HEAR things, and not just see them, to learn well.

Tips for Auditory Learners

1. You can listen to pre-recorded lectures on a tape recorder or Youtube videos to process your learning effectively.

2. Read your notes, stories, assignments or directions out loud, specially when it is new study material.

3. Try creating musical jingles, using mnemonics, and discussing ideas verbally to aid speedy revision.

Resources for Auditory Learners: Video Lessons | Sample Papers | School Talk

Tactile Learners

These learners process information best through a ‘hands-on’ experience. If you think that actually doing an activity is the easiest way to learn information then your dominant learning style is that of a tactile learner. Keep in mind that you learn best by DOING, not just by reading, seeing, or hearing.

Tips for Tactile Learners

1.While studying, include a lot of activities that involve touching, building, moving, or drawing. Basically try and get as much hands on experience as possible with your art or science projects.

2. While preparing revision notes, a tactile learner is advised to write or type his own notes, which could be images or mindmaps or whatever best works for them.

3. While revising, you may want to hold the revision notes in your hand instead of keeping it on the table.

4. To further make learning effective, you can even prepare flash cards for each step in a concept based procedure and regularly challenge yourself to arrange the cards in the correct sequence.

5. You should also include a lot of real life examples and case studies in your revision notes.

6. It will be most effective for you to create tests for self on various topics and attempt them.

Resources for Tactile Learners: Interactive Learning Activities | Live Test Series | Test Generator

To strengthen your learning, we suggest you to play your way through concept-based puzzles and games available on meritnation.com

So which style suits you best? Write in and tell us how your exam preparation is faring!

All the very best for your exams!

Cheers!

Team Meritnation