What are the advantages to knowing your personal learning style?

Some people learn best by:

• reading books, manuals, instructions, or;
• hands-on, doing while being instructed (example, following video instructions), or;
• being shown (in person), then doing, or;
• just plunging in and learning only from one's mistakes (vs. learning from other people's mistakes and following set instructions).

Each learning style has positives and negatives. There is no right or wrong style, and one person may use different styles in different situations. But, as a learner, if you learn best by being shown a skill and you can only read a book to learn the task, you will likely end up frustrated or even failing to do the task.

The advantage to knowing your style (or styles) is that you can help guide the learning process. If a teacher relies on book-learning, you could ask the teacher to show a few examples and how the teacher recommends solving any problems that arise. You could begin a study group so that several students can use different learning styles within the group. You could also pick a study friend who can "show" you rather than simply giving you information. You can also look on the internet for visual aids or examples.

The best teachers use a combination of methods that hook different learning styles. A history teacher might assign a chapter to read at home, followed by classroom discussion, followed by assigning projects to small groups of students. The teacher might use a textbook (Words), overhead graphics (images). a movie (images plus Words), skits created by students (visual and auditory), and might assign some other form of "practice" such as writing a 5-page paper about the topic.