Adapt with the Memletic Learning Styles

This chapter helps you discover your stronger and secondary learning styles, and the range of styles available to you. It also provides you with strategies for improving your learning by using your dominant styles and developing your secondary styles. These strategies help you adapt your learning to suit your preferences, while challenging you to increase the range of styles you can use. The result is you can apply your new-found abilities to many more varied goals.

Learning styles group common ways that people learn. Everyone has a mix of learning styles. Some people may find that they have a dominant style of learning, with far less use of the other styles. Others may find that they use different styles in different circumstances. There is no right mix. Nor are your styles fixed. You can develop ability in less dominate styles, as well as further develop styles that you already use well.

Traditional schooling continues to use mainly linguistic and logical teaching methods. It also uses a limited range of learning and teaching techniques. Many schools still rely on classroom and book-based teaching, much repetition, and pressured exams for reinforcement and review. A result is that we often label those who use these learning styles and techniques as "bright." Those who use less favored learning styles often find themselves in lower classes, with various not-so-complimentary labels and sometimes lower quality teaching. This can create positive and negative spirals that reinforce the belief that one is "smart" or "dumb."

By recognizing and understanding your own learning styles, you can use techniques better suited to you. This improves the speed and quality of your learning.

In this chapter, we first look at the basis of learning styles and their influence on learning. Following that, I have an exercise for you. The exercise is a questionnaire to help you discover your preferred learning styles using the Memletics Learning Styles inventory (print version).

We then look at each of the Memletic Styles in turn. In summary, these are:

Visual. You prefer using pictures, images, and spatial understanding.
Aural. You prefer using sound and music.
Verbal. You prefer using words, both in speech and writing.
Physical. You prefer using your body, hands and sense of touch.
Logical. You prefer using logic, reasoning and systems.
Social. You prefer to learn in groups or with other people.
Solitary. You prefer to work alone and use self-study.

Lastly, we look at how you can improve your learning by expanding your learning styles. One obvious way is to use more of your dominant learning styles. An interesting feature of learning styles is that you can also improve your learning performance by using styles you do not often use. If you are a mainly visual person, then you can make a lesson more memorable by using some aural content in your visualizations. If you like to use logic, then use some physical learning techniques occasionally.