Advice for Auditory/Discussion Learners
by Ronan Twidle
I have come to find over the years that the more people gave me handouts to read or textbooks to learn from, the more I realised how ill-suited I was to the traditional learning method of read, write and repeat.
This is how I discovered I was an auditory learner – or, to be clearer, a discussion learner.
To me this means that I am able to learn much more efficiently and remember much more effectively when I hear things and then have the chance to discuss and ask questions. By doing this, I have the opportunity to engage my brain to allow it to understand what I’m learning and store the information.
Just hearing things can sometimes be helpful and sometimes not, as this doesn’t engage me, so just being spoken to is not the solution. For me to effectively learn, I must understand the topic, and to do this, I must ask many questions, which I find I cannot do by just reading a textbook and then reading another textbook to explain the first textbook. As my questions are designed to understand the parameters of what I am learning, to me, it is much more helpful to discuss things with another person who is able to answer all of my queries.
If you find that just reading a textbook or looking at images isn’t working for you, and that when you have a conversation with your friends or teacher about a challenging subject you remember the information much better, it may be that you are a more aural learner. Unfortunately, the current schooling system relies a lot on written work and reading off a whiteboard, but it doesn’t mean that you are handicapped. To improve your chance of learning more effectively, engage with the teacher more, ask lots of questions – as many as you can, as this will help you cement your understanding in the long term and most of all, keep listening!
This way of learning may not be the most practical if you find you are shy by nature, but consider it an opportunity to improve your confidence in speaking aloud and asking questions. Don’t keep your hand down in a lesson just for fear of ‘asking a silly question’, but take the opportunity to ask that silly question, as it will help you to understand what you are learning that bit better, and a lot of your classmates are likely to be thinking the same as you.