17 replies to this topic

[Boggart]

As most of you should know by now, people learn differently and people have their own tricks.

For example, I'm an audio learner. I learn best by hearing something over and over again and it will probably be in my brain for a very long time. Sometimes i hear things once and I can bring it up years later (scaring people along the way). When i read my notes, i say them audibly so I can remember myself saying them. Yet I'm an awful visual learner and using different colours and highlighting and grouping does shit all for me.

My friend is a complete visual and concept learner. He hears a concept once, and he will understand it and be able to apply to different situations. But his memory capacity isn't the best. He's going to be a theoretical physicist. Suits him.

My other friend doesn't know how he learns... and doesn't do well in school. But what he likes to do is draw pictures to help him remember notes and give him "cues". He's in theatre. Cues probably help and stuff.

How do you learn, and what tricks do you use to help you along the way?

[Elindoril]

Completely a visual learner, I learn and retain best when I can physically see, read, and work out problems.

Audio does well for my imagination, but if I'm staring at the wall and only listen to the teacher talk, I almost immediately forget what she was talking about, thus why I always have my head buried in the related text instead.

[Boggart]

Completely a visual learner, I learn and retain best when I can physically see, read, and work out problems.

Audio does well for my imagination, but if I'm staring at the wall and only listen to the teacher talk, I almost immediately forget what she was talking about, thus why I always have my head buried in the related text instead.

I wish i could visually learn. I need to physically see things and can't imagine shit. Which is why i'm awful at minecraft. and drawing.

[Elindoril]

I wish i could visually learn. I need to physically see things and can't imagine shit. Which is why i'm awful at minecraft. and drawing.

I have a tons and tons of concepts that I've always wanted to draw out, of course actually drawing them out is a completely different field.

[tri]

Visual Learner. I find it harder when I do not see it. I get asked this every year at school.

[KaibaSama]

Visual and tactile.

Visual because I absolutely hate listing to lectures, they bore me and I forget half of what my teacher talked about when the bell rings. I fall asleep and fidget when I have to listen for 45 minutes. All my math classes have teachers that lecture at me. They draw pictures, but then explain the pictures in lectures, so those don't help me at all.

Tactile because I prefer being able to physically touch and manipulate things. I love science, in 9th grade Chem. I spent quite a lot of the lab's making miniature hobo fires out of paper towels and the matches we used. I absolutely hate geometry as none of the teachers have objects like plastic pyramids or those map/net things that you fold up to make things like cubes and prisms.The only year I passed a gemoerty part in class was when my teacher used those to teach with. Now all my teachers just draw 2 dimensional shapes on the wipe boards.

Spoiler

You can benefit by using a combination of sight and experience when you study. You can pick up information by listening but you are too active to listen for long without speaking out. You like to see class demonstrations and you like to take part in study groups, labs, and learning games. You may talk with your hands and you may love to read. You would do well in a drama class. You may sit in the back of the class but you would probably be better off in the front. You can get distracted easily. You would benefit from making flash cards or using pre-made cards to study. You like study groups but you can also study well on your own.

Just something I pulled off the internet about those two learning styles combined.

Edited by Satsuki, 02 October 2012 - 02:11 PM.

[Sweeney]

The whole concept of VAK is misleading. People start to think they can only learn one way, and that that method applies to everything they attempt.

Which is wrong. And ridiculous.
People are complicated - attempting to categorise them into three boxes is foolhardy.

[Nymh]

I have no idea what kind of learner I am. If I had to put a name to it, I would call it "intuition" or possibly "preconception."

I try to work out what it is that I'm learning before I learn it, and then test myself against the material/speaker to see if I'm right. Most of the time in school I take quizzes before reading the chapters I'm quizzing over and just fill in the blanks as I go.

I retain information best when I am quizzed over it, so that's how I study. I want to be asked the question, even if I don't know the answer, and I'll figure it out during the process. When I'm asked again, I am doubly confident in the answer from being previously quizzed over it and being able to come to the answer on my own through intuition.

[ElBastardoVerde]

With certain subjects, like History and English, I just listen and I can understand it no problem. Math and science require me to practice a few times before I get the hang of it.

[Boggart]

The whole concept of VAK is misleading. People start to think they can only learn one way, and that that method applies to everything they attempt.

Which is wrong. And ridiculous.
People are complicated - attempting to categorise them into three boxes is foolhardy.

Well of course people can learn in multiple ways. I'm just asking which is easiest. I can't use audio learning for stuff like biochemical pathways or for math. But If something requires an audio component, such as language or music, I generally excel at it significantly better than other means.

[Sweeney]

Well of course people can learn in multiple ways. I'm just asking which is easiest. I can't use audio learning for stuff like biochemical pathways or for math. But If something requires an audio component, such as language or music, I generally excel at it significantly better than other means.

Right, so you're not an "audial learner", then.

[Boggart]

Right, so you're not an "audial learner", then.

Why must we be technical and just discuss how we like to/most effective way to learn? can't we just chat without getting technical about every damn thing?

[Sweeney]

Why must we be technical and just discuss how we like to/most effective way to learn? can't we just chat without getting technical about every damn thing?

Because the shallow, unexamined life is dull.

[NapisaurusRex]

If I can physically write it down, pen to paper, I'll remember it.

I also remember a lot of things by picturing what I was doing at the time, I can remember a lot about situations that way. If someone asks me something and ever questions my answer I can tell them what they were wearing, what they were doing and the exact words said.

^
However, this is how I remember things when I can't write them down. In a school setting, I would picture what the teacher was wearing or what the hot guy in front of me was doing when the lesson was being taught and the answer would come to me.

Yung thinks it's great that he can ask me about obscure things posted on Codex and I can magically pull up the thread that it was in. It's because I picture all of your faces a certain way when you say things and then I picture that face when he wants to know where something is.

I have no idea what this kind of learning style is.

[8143FF763271]

Right, so you're not an "audial learner", then.

He is, though. The argument that there are "different sorts" of learners is irrelevant at best, a crock of bullshit at worst. What we do know about people is that they're more likely to learn what interests them, least likely to learn what doesn't, and that different subjects are more effectively taught different ways. Math is easier to learn with a fixed visual component (it rids us of the burden of memory created by the temporality of sound) while diction is better learned by hearing and repetition. These things are infinitely more relevant than some bullshit "neurological" affinity towards different "learning styles". So, for all that matters, he probably is an audial learner in the sense that the shit he learns is better taught through audial means.

And yeah, the arbitrary nature with which everyone is discussing how they personally learn is a better approach to this subject than any. People here aren't really discussing a particular typology (whether they learn by a particular sensory stimuli or by different mnemonic means or what have you) and odds are they wouldn't personally know how to handle such a typology rigorously so the idea of an individualized account of how they learn in their perspective is better suited for this discussion.

Edited by Khaligula, 02 October 2012 - 03:50 PM.

[Piinky]

I'm also a visual learner. I have to physically see something done in order to retain that information myself.
I also have to do it myself on occasion, learning by trial and error is common for me.

^^ This.