Students' Learning Styles: Secrets to Successful Teaching

“One man’s meat is another man’s poison” goes a saying. This saying implies that what is good to somebody is not necessarily good for other people. There are somethings which some people consider to be a delicacy while the others loathe them. Take as an example, snails. What do you think of them, kind of meat you will serve for dinner or merely disgusting slimy animals? Well, different people will have different answer for this question.

However in this post, I will not talk about what people like to eat and what people don’t. I believe that this saying has an educational value. To be more specific, it has something to do with language learning.
We should know as a teacher that students who come to our class are of different backgrounds and abilities. It is also certain that they use different ways to learn a language especially a foreign language.
What must a teacher bear in mind before teaching them one concept from the language learnt is how her students learn. It means that before doing anything else, a teacher should try to find out her students learning preferences and styles.
When it comes to discussing learning styles or preferences, there are some things a teacher can do to find out what her students’ learning styles are, among others by using a quiz on learning style inventory. After knowing what styles the students belong to then then teacher can formulate what is necessary to be done with certain students. It sounds like a big project, doesn’t it? If it really sounds overwhelmingly difficult, then what we must remember is that mostly there are three major divisions of learning styles; visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.
Visual learners generally depend their learning by “seeing” it. They mostly learn better by looking at or observing charts or pictures than reading it from textbooks. But this doesn’t mean that they don’t read. Visual learners usually have another channel of learning that is by reading. However, they still prefer to read a text which is accompanied with an illustration or a picture. Students with this type of learning style prefer a demonstration to a lecture. By following the demonstration, they grasp the message faster than when they have to read it themselves. Interestingly, this kind of students will likely to ask questions like “Can I see that again?”, or to make remarks “I see”.
Auditory learners, as  the name  suggests, learn best when they hear it. They rely on explanations about a subject. They will put effort to pay attention to teacher’s talk. They enjoy listening activities. They are good at recognizing sounds or pronunciation of the target language. They can memorize details when they “hear” it. They send the information to their mind by saying it loudly. Activities they do mostly are like reading aloud and thinking out loud. These students are good at mimicking, that is imitating or repeating after the teacher or a language model. Students with this type of learning style usually ask questions like “can you repeat that, please” or make remarks like, “I don’t understand what you say, can you say that again?”.
Kinesthetic students belong to those who learn something by doing. These students think that they have to “touch” what they are learning before understanding it. In terms of learning a language, there hasn’t been many thing to touch. Therefore, students having this style like to act out or perform. They are fond of participating class activities which involve movement. To remember a lesson, kinesthetic students sometimes have to make physical response like acting out the verbs, touching the object, tinkering things without reading the manual, etc. These students sometimes ask questions like, “can you/we do it again?”
Knowing these differences, a teacher is made aware that she cannot generalize her treatment in the class and then label students as ones she cannot reach or ones that drive her nuts, and only those with identical learning styles or preferences with that of the teacher can reap benefits in the class. Students are different and therefore should be treated differently. It means that every time the teacher prepares a lesson, she needs to include activities in the class which cover these learning styles. Doing this, a teacher can ensure that the students are able to succeed in their learning.