Have you ever sat in a class or lecture and felt confused and like you aren't learning a thing from the instructor or lecturer, only to have the person in the seat next to you comment about what a great instructor they are? Or you find a text book simple and understandable, while your equally intelligent friend thinks it is cryptic and useless? These types of experiences are usually due to different learning styles. The best teachers and writers are able to address people with several different learning styles at once, but unfortunately, you can't always find the best – and some situations and teaching methods aren't well-suited for some types of learners. My junior high German teacher, Frau McCarthy, spent a lot of time with us helping us learn how we best learn languages – this has been invaluable for me as I've studied other languages. As an independent learner, knowing our learning style can help us choose the best study tools for us.
There are a number of different theories about how people learn. A simple but useful method sorts people into visual, aural (sound) and kinesthetic (physical) learners. Most people can be sorted into this method with just a few questions – Blogthings provides a very short effective quiz to determine this. Once you know your learning style, you can pick study tools and methods that work well with how you learn. The all-audio Pimsleur method is an excellent choice for aural learners, but may not be a good choice for a visual or kinesthetic learner (although, I personally am a kinesthetic learner and do well with the Pimsleur courses as long as I make sure to listen to them while I go for a walk or jog.) An aural learner may have trouble learning just from a book and may not find flashcards useful except as prompts for what to say, but a visual learner would likely do particularly well with labeled pictures and flashcards. A kinesthetic learner is likely to find a book with a lot of written exercises very useful and may also do well with flashcards (although personally, I find that I need to write out my own rather than purchase pre-made flashcards.) I am particularly impressed with the Rosetta Stone software, which combines visual and kinesthetic (and to a lesser extent aural) learning styles. The only drawback is that they do not teach you how to write non-Latin scripts, so if you want to learn to write Hebrew, Arabic, Pashto, or Farsi, you will need to find a resource just for this – however there are a number of excellent books and websites available just for this purpose.
Figure Out Your Learning StyleWhat's Your Learning Style? quiz from Blogthings - a short, quick, but quite accurate quiz on learning styles.
Multiple Intelligences - a more in depth look at learning styles after the work of Howard Gardner, includes in-depth testing for Gardner's 8 cognitive capacities. From this site, you can also purchase June Kaminski's e-book Multiple Intelligences: Learning Styles Workbook, which includes study hints based on your learning style.
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|primarily visual/kinesthetic||primarily aural|
| The only Middle Eastern Language in the free quick demo is French, but after you complete the quick demo, it will allow you to download samples in Arabic, Hebrew, Persian/Farsi, Turkish, Pashto, and many other languages.|
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