What is your learning style?

Post Reply New Topic

I recently started back to college again. Today I was thinking about different means in which people grasp subject matter.

Some take notes. Head down. Flipping through their textbook. Others highlight in their textbooks. Giving the teacher eye contact every once in a while. Some talk to the person sitting next to them.

I have never been able to keep attention if I look at my professors. I can only take notes in very few classes. Most of the time I keep my head down. Either laying on my arms. Or with my hands resting over my ears holding my head up. Eyes usually closed. I'm not sleeping. I'm not bored. This helps me to focus and paint a picture in my head of what the professor is saying rather than remembering the actual words he's saying. Once the picture is there. It's like a comic strip in my mind. It's easy to go back to it once the time to test comes. I review the slide show and everything he or she discussed comes back.

Is anyone else like this?

In what fashion do you learn material most effectively?

I hate examples using something else instead of actual examples. The processor, imagine a man inside with some lights... riiighhht..... the memory sticks... say what? There are no memory sticks inside a computer!! !! !

So then I imagine a man, and forget completely. Has to be proper example.

I'm like this, I have difficulties focussing at school and at home. I learn by listening to the teacher, I don't take any notes. I can remember for years what a teacher has said about a subject. When I want to study for exams for example, I read over the text in the book, like when I read in my spare time for pleasure and relaxation. I do this once or twice. It's a relaxed way to remind myself of what a subject contians. Like:''Ow, yeah, that's true, I remember it now''. It works when I don't make such a deal out of learning, and it improves my marks.

I know I'm not in school anymore,

I am more of a hands-on/visual person, I do understand the textbook stuff but I would rather do, not read about it. I liked being more active person and doing things, not being stuck in a classroom reading from a book about it.

great example: technical school teacher had us read about grass and field mowing, im thinking you know, I think we get the point now on how to mow, many of us have been using a mower since we were about 12 or 13, LETS MOW not read about it.

teacher did have training in Montessori method(learn by doing), book reading/note taking was only used when being observed by principal or if others got too out of hand (boys will be boys, and become immature as a result)

I'm a kinesthetic learner. I can't remember things unless I turn it into a process. So, when the professor lectures, I write down ninety percent of what he/she says. I'm the type of person where you could turn my notes into a textbook about the subject. I write very fast in cursive, and somehow the process of writing helps me memorize the material. I don't ever really remember exact words or details, but instead the important points and big picture. I can't imagine being able to recall the teachers words or voice, or being able to visualize words on a page, but if I remember the general ideas then I can start writing and that sparks my memory.
Usually before a test, I just skim over my notes and highlight the important bits. I'm big on highlighting and writing in the margins of the textbooks too.

I'm not school anymore but I know how I learn and how I don't learn.

I've never been able to learn much of anything from reading. I seem to read the words but not actually take in what they mean. I'm really bad at note-taking and listening at the same time so that wouldn't work for me either and I also get confused about what the important points are so most of the time don't end up naking notes at all or writing too many useless facts.

I learn visually, like from watching documentaries or from others showing me how to do something. Then I need to be able to do it to grasp whatever it is I'm trying to learn (whether it's a math problem or changing a tire, it doesn't matter). If I don't do this, I'll forget it in less than a day.

I'm a visual learner, but that also applies to when I read, because I can see the words as I read them.
I can't learn when people say it aloud unless there's also an overhead (then I just ignore what the person's saying), and I get so flustered when I try kinesthetic learning because my head gets all muddled up with trying to do multiple things at once. I can't learn and write it down and I can't do a lab experiment and learn it at the same time. I can't do it well anyway
Luckily when I learn something, it's usually there for a long while (unless it's science...it doesn't really want to stick! Even history was better for that then science, and I disliked history more!)

I have to read it to understand it. Listening to a lecture isn't going to get me all that far, and I sure as hell can't take notes during one. Depending on the subject, I might take notes out of the book, but I usually won't. On principle, I refuse to ever highlight or otherwise mark in the textbook itself.

Hands on. Lectures are meaningless to me and I can't follow them, though I osmosis my way through them so they're not useless.

I have trouble keeping focus at college too sometimes.
I'm too interested in learning about my special interest (philosophy).

But I've found I grasp things the more we go over it, like in law... rote learning.
I learn best with rote learning.

and to help me revise I make it as visual as I can, so I always make myself mind/concept maps.. very useful!

Charlie

I'm one of those people who just reads the book, then turns up for the exam. The others hate me!
I didn't realise most people have to actually study to learn a subject...
Following a lecture is quite hard for me, what with the general background noise (I wish people who didn't want to listen would just leave!) I often miss part of the spoken information, so am generally dependant on the printout (not everyone puts them up before the lecture - really annoying!) and then reading the textbook cover to cover. I don't see the background reading for most of my subjects as work, so that probably helps. For the practicals, I often have to go back and ask my supervisor for further explaination, as if they just give me verbal instructions I tend to forget bits or miss bits out, but if I have full, written directions, or it's something that I'm used to or tutor others on, then I'm fine...
As for taking notes in class, my handwriting is atrocious, my lab book looks like it has been run over by a truck, and even my printed notes are covered in additional scrawls where I have found relevent info. and added it.
My notes are a combination of words and diagrams, arrows everywhere and stuff underlined several times or written in different colours.
Maybe it's because I'm studying an unusual subject, but I often find it easier to just go away and read the book or journal than to ask someone about the subject (with some notable exceptions). If I've seen it written down, I'm liable to remember it.

kinesthetic.

I am visual and very concrete. I cannot listen for long periods of the time.

Hyperfocusing(ADHD) or osmosis(HFA)...

I dont study, do not read much materials for calsses and in my graduate level classes I am pulling a 3.78 GPA. I do not know how i am doing it but I either eventually know waht I need to know or I am hyperfocused on an assignment and I work extremely fast at it, getting a lot of work done in a short period of time, usually at the last minute.

I do not know of another way I am able to apply to a method of learning.