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Learning Styles

The Kinesthetic/Tactual Learner


Characteristics of this Learner:

1. The Kinesthetic/tactual learner is the one who tries things out, touches, feels, manipulates.
2. These learners express their feelings physically; they jump for joy, push, tug, stomp, pound.
3. Body tension is a good index of the Kinesthetic/tactual student’s emotion.

Learning Modes

1. The Kinesthetic learner gestures when speaking.


2. Is a poor listener.
3. Stands very close when speaking or listening
4. Quickly loses interest in a long verbal discourse.
5. The student starts the day off looking neat and tidy, but soon becomes disheveled through physical activity.
6. The student learns best by doing.
7. They remember best what has been done, not what they have seen or talked about.
8. They need direct involvement in what they are learning.
9. These students seem distractible and find it difficult to pay attention to auditory or visual presentations.
10. They attack problems physically.
11. Often seem impulsive, they seek the solution that involves that greatest activity.

Gender

1. Males tend to have a talent for gross body movement, be strong in the visual channel, and have a need to
manipulate their environment. Hyperactive students, 95 percent of whom are male, may have extremely high
kinesthetic/tactual preference.

Classroom Environment

1. Most classroom education is sedentary.


2. Classroom instruction is largely lecture and writing.
3. These forms of instruction seen least suitable for hyperactive students.
4. Hyperactive – or hyperkinetic – youngsters especially may benefit from kinesthetic/tactual learning
strategies.

Traits

1. Kinesthetic/tactual learners like o read stories with a lot of action, especially at the beginning.
2. Rarely an avid reader, the kinesthetic/tactual learner may fidget a lot while handling the book.
3. They are often poor spellers, they need to write words down to determine if they “feel” right. Their
handwriting, though possibly good initially, tends to deteriorate as they run out of space on the [paper and
the student exerts more and more pressure on the writing instrument.

Teaching Strategies

1. Have the student write on paper or on the board.


2. Draw hands-on activities with real objects they can touch.
3. Raise hands to volunteer information, use hand signals, small group discussion
4. Utilize music, sacred art, field trip with hands on activities.

The Auditory Learner


Characteristics of this Learner

1. Talks about what to do about the pros and cons of a situation


2. Express their feelings by shouting for joy, blowing up verbally, indicating emotions through tone, pitch, and
volume of their voices.
3. They enjoy listening but cannot wait to get a chance to talk.
4. Tend towards long and repetitive descriptions
5. They like hearing themselves and others talk.

Learning Modes

1. Enjoy reading dialogue and plays and dislike lengthy narratives and descriptions.
2. They mover their lips and speak under their breath while reading.
3. Has good auditory word attack skills and uses a phonics approach to spelling.
4. When learning to read, children with an auditory preference gain better silent reading skills when taught in a
phonetic approach rather than a visual one and recall lists of memorized words better when they are
presented orally.

Classroom Environment

1. Respond well to lecture and discussions as well as to tapes, records, or the radio.
2. They benefit from museum field trips in which a lecturer describes the art, for they enjoy hearing and talking
about the art pieces more than seeing them
3. Enjoy musical concerts.
4. There is some evidence of left or right-ear advantages in listening tasks. Students have been shown to
process verbal information more efficiently and accurately when it was presented to the right ear than when
it was presented to the left ear.

Traits and Tips

1. Nonverbal listening, such as to music or natural sounds, was processed better when presented to the left
ear. If words are heard by both ears at the same time, the listener will report those heard on the right and
ignore those heard on the left. The reverse is true for nonverbal listening.
2. It might be useful for teachers to stand to their student’ right when giving directions and other verbal
information and to the students’ left when a strong nonverbal message is being sent.

The Visual Learner

Characteristics of this Learner

1. Looks around and examines the Situation


2. Less exuberant
3. May stare when angry, beam when happy.
4. Facial expression is a good index of emotion in the visual learner.
5. Visual Learners think in pictures and detail
6. They have vivid imaginations
7. They may be quiet and become impatient when extensive listening is called for.
8. Neat and meticulous in appearance, may dress in the same way all the time.
9. Generally have good handwriting.

Learning Modes

1. They learn by seeing. They have greater immediate recall of words that are presented visually.
2. Visual learners take notes. Remembers faces but forgets names.
3. Unaware of sounds, the visual learner can be distracted by visual disorder or movement.
4. They solve problems deliberately, planning in advance and organizing their thoughts by writing them down.
5. Recognize words by sight, relying ion their configuration for spelling. Like to read descriptions and
narratives. (They stop and stare into space, imagining the scene).
6. Show intense concentration in reading.
7. Enjoy learning from books, looking at pictures, reading from and writing on the board or paper, viewing film
strips, slide shows or movies – anything they can see. Not particularly responsive to music.
8. Prefer visual arts and benefit from field trips to art museums and galleries.
9. They may not express their appreciation vocally, but they are deeply affected by visual displays.

Taken from: “Teaching through Learning Channels, Performance Learning Systems, Inc. Emerson NJ, 1983

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