Different learning styles: What type of a learner are you?

Before beginning to learn a new language, it is perhaps useful to consider what sort of a learner you are. Try to remember:

• How have you learnt most effectively in the past?

• What did you find most enjoyable about learning in the past?

This will afford you a new insight into your learning preferences. This will help you to learn a new language more quickly and enjoyably. Most learners cannot be so categorically defined. Many people learn most effectively from a combination of different situations and conditions. Because everyone learns differently, there are perhaps (if you want to be very exact...) as many types of learners as there are people learning something new. Nonetheless it is possible to differentiate between learning styles:

There are four types of learning styles

Here we will explain the four different learning styles. Perhaps one of them describes you at least to an extent.

Learning Style 1 – Audio learning

If you are an auditive learner, then you most easily learn information that you have heard. In this case, you will benefit from hearing the course material and then repeating these orally. It will be useful to you, when a lot of the exercises are of audio type. You like to read aloud material you are learning and are disturbed by background noise.

Learning Style 2 – Communicative learning

How to recognise that you are a communicative learner:

• Do you prefer to learn by communication and practical use and by verbal discussion of material?

• Do you best retain the basics of a language when you discuss these verbally?

• After learning basic vocabulary you want to use them immediately?

If so you belong to the second group, the communicative learner.

Learning Style 3 – Visual Learning

If you best retain information by reading, then you are a visual learner. You find it easiest to learn new material when it is in written form and you can digest it visually. You probably need a pleasant and orderly study environment and retain written exercises most effectively.

Learning Style 4 – Analytical Learning

Our last learning style, the systematic or analytical learner describes you if you tend to abstraction and systems. You like to analyse the grammar of a language first, before you begin to use the language practically.

What is your learning style?

Do you recognise in yourself any of the learning styles or do some of the characteristics of them seem familiar from your own experiences?

At DiALECT Polish Academy we develop the language programmes to suit every learning style and so enable every student to learn a new foreign language effectively and quickly. We would like to wish you enjoyment and success at learning a new language.