In Part 1 of this series, we introduced learning styles and how your child’s dominant style points to the types of learning experiences they need in order to perform at their best.

Your learning style refers to the way in which you most easily and effectively absorb, process, comprehend and retain information (‘Learning Styles’ 2018).

In this article we discuss Auditory Learners, who prefer the use of sound in order to learn.

You will know your child maybe an auditory learner if they exude many of the following characteristics:

• Enjoy the exchange of talking and listening to form understandings
• Describe things in detail
• Drawn to sound e.g. love music and singing, distracted by noises
• Prefer spoken instructions
• Remember names
• Enjoy listening
• Rhythmic
• Enjoy poetry or other lyrical texts
• Vary voice expression, tone, pitch, volume when speaking

Learning tools that work well for auditory learners include:

• Music and song (e.g. singing out facts or times tables, forming a tune as a memory anchor)
• Speeches
• Poetry and rhyme
• Verbal repetition (g. practising spelling out words in a list and repeating)
• Podcasts or recorded lectures
• Online games with a strong/repetitive sound element
• Sound out words/clap syllables
• Discuss ideas or problems
• Activities requiring careful listening
• Activities that require verbal description or discussion of a diagram, image, graph or other data
• Reading aloud to check writing makes sense or to understand material
• Teachers with expressive voices or strong interest in music/singing/spoken word (such as regularly reading texts aloud to students or using rhyme for memory triggers)

Auditory learners need sound to learn optimally. They need opportunities to discuss concepts with teachers and peers, and to listen. Using sound in different ways helps auditory learners to assimilate, make sense of and retain information, and to create new ideas. It’s essential that your auditory child receives these types of experiences on a daily basis in order to reach her/his potential!

Resources

‘Characteristics of Learning Styles’ http://www.llcc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Characteristics-of-Learning-Styles.pdf

‘Learning Styles’ https://teach.com/what/teachers-know/learning-styles/

Rachel Hayes