Are you the type to always ask others to explain things even though you can access the explanations via different sources? If so, it means that you’re probably an auditory learner who relies on sounds and spoken words/explanations for comprehension.
If you are curious to learn more about the characteristics of auditory learning style, benefits, and some teaching and learning strategies, keep reading.
What Is the Auditory Learning Style?
Your preferred studying method can significantly influence your educational experience. For example, a visual learner will thrive when knowledge is provided through maps, graphs, and diagrams. When information is given through books, the reader may remember it better. However, auditory learners prefer another approach.
Before we dive in deep, let’s introduce you to this unique learning style. What is the auditory learning style? Auditory learning means relying on sounds rather than visualizations or practical work to enhance comprehension.
Auditory learners can easily recall what their teacher has explained and usually participate actively in class. They are excellent listeners, so it is common for them to get easily distracted by other sounds during class. Those who prefer learning through listening find it challenging to focus and grasp information given through text or other visualizations.
Auditory learners find different techniques to study if the data is not directly communicated to them by sound. Auditory learning methods include:
- Studying with voice recordings;
- Asking questions;
- Asking someone else to explain terms;
- Participating actively in discussions.
What are the characteristics of the auditory learning style?
Exploring different learning styles is important because it can help you identify your strengths and weaknesses, resulting in a higher quality of learning. Remember that there is no wrong or right approach to learning styles; it is an individual preference and identifying what style suits you best will help you succeed in your academic journey.
Whether you’re a student or a teacher trying your best to identify your student’s learning styles, this list will provide some of the main characteristics of auditory learners:
- Prefer spoken explanations over written ones;
- Enjoy participating in discussions;
- Prefer learning lessons through stories;
- Rely on voice recordings when revising;
- They are easily distracted by background noises;
- Good at recalling spoken information;
- Excellent in communicating in and outside the classroom;
- Good listeners;
- Great storytellers;
- Skilled at oral presentations.
What Are the Benefits of the Auditory Learning Style?
Since this learning style necessitates active listening and speaking, students naturally improve their listening and speaking skills, have increased learning retention, and more.
Interested to know more about the benefits of the auditory learning style? Stay with us!
Enhanced critical thinking
Critical thinking is essential to learning because it allows students to reflect on and fully comprehend their points of view. Based on personal observation and comprehension, this skill helps students determine how to make sense of the concepts being spoken of. And since auditory learners always communicate ideas, they expand their critical thinking simultaneously.
Improved listening skills
Since auditory learners are highly focused on listening to instructions and concepts, they continuously improve their listening skills.
Good listening skills make you a better communicator, and it also makes the experience of speaking to you more enjoyable for others. That’s why students who are good listeners are also appreciated by their peers.
Better comprehension skills
Listening not only improves communication but also enhances understanding skills. Since you’re constantly observing and focusing on tasks, you’ll be able to develop better comprehension skills.
While communicating, people focus on the execution and the delivery of the message, but sometimes not everything is communicated clearly. Luckily in such cases, auditory learners are less likely to get lost in translation since their comprehension skills are significantly more developed.
Increased memory
Auditory learners absorb information quickly. One of the perks of auditory learners is increased memory. If you apply the right strategies during learning, you can easily remember everything necessary for your exams.
Luckily, with technological advancements, you can easily access information anytime and learn through different events simply by putting your earphones in.
Enhanced interactivity
As we mentioned before, auditory learners have excellent communication skills. The need to have concepts explained verbally pushes them to interact more than other types of learners. And their listening skills make them easy to talk to.
Teaching Auditory Learners
For students to take advantage of this learning style, teachers must use the best approaches for these learners. Luckily there are many options available to help both parents and teachers teach new things effectively to auditory learners.
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Giving them a verbal summary of the topic learned will help them get on track with the key concepts. Asking them questions regarding the subject and repeating the information at the end of a class or study revision will help them greatly.
See the list below if you are looking for a more detailed list of auditory learning strategies.
What are some auditory learning strategies?
Now that we know that auditory learners learn best by active listening, whether from an instructor, stories, or video clips, we can include some additional strategies that will ease the job of the instructor and the learners. The list of strategies includes:
Information repetition: Every time you teach something new, go through the concepts again; This way, you reinforce the ideas in students’ memory and make remembering or recalling them simpler.
Lead a class discussion: Encouraging students to participate in the discussion is another excellent method to help auditory learners succeed, as they can also listen to their peers’ explanations.
Recorded lectures: Since written notes do not help these learners, you can record lectures when they miss a class. Or you can find a similar video on youtube regarding the topic and assign it to them.
Group projects: Group projects lead to many discussions that help auditory learners exchange ideas.
Q&A sessions: Questions lead to verbal answers and more thorough explanations that help retain information.
Try to minimize distractions: Since auditory learners are easily distracted by noise, teachers should always try to reduce talk non-related to the lesson.
Ask them to summarize concepts: Since auditory learners often talk to themselves and repeat information, it’s advisable sometimes to ask them to summarize ideas in their own words.
The Bottom Line
Understanding your learning type means you know what works best for you and can customize your learning environment accordingly. If most of the abovementioned characteristics sound familiar to you, you probably are an auditory learner. This means you can benefit greatly from the advantages of this learning style if you use the correct strategies.
Teachers, on the other hand, can easily identify their students learning styles based on the same characteristics. A good teacher should always be ready to use appropriate approaches when delivering information for students to learn effectively.
For more insights into assessing learning styles, consider exploring various types of assessment of learning.
