What Kind of Learner is your Child (Introduction)

Your child is different from other children. He is unique, one of the kind. The way your child learns will be different from others. Hence, working closely with your child and being involved in their study may enable you to understand the learning style of your child better.

How a child learns depends on multiple factors: age, learning style, environment, personality, etc. For example, younger children (ages 7-11)find it easier to understand concepts such as number, colour and shapes. Older children (ages 11 and up) begin to reason and explore abstract ideas such as grammar and test hypothesis about the world.

What kind of learner is your child? Most students in Singapore are trained to learn from multiple aspects. However, there is always a learning style that stands out. Students usually perform better when they are able to identify their own personal learning styles and adapt their study patterns. As a parent, you may identify one or more such traits with your child.

The three types of Learning Styles are:

• Visual Learner Characteristics
• Auditory Learner Characteristics
• Kinesthetic Learner Characteristics

You can find out what type of learner your child is by observing them, finding out how they learn best, their length of concentration and what type of interaction they prefer.

By understanding what your child likes to learn best, you will be able to motivate him to learn more. Some of the things to take note include your child’s dominant senses, whether they like listening to explanations and reading aloud. You could use reading stories to encourage this kind of child. Most children enjoy learning through songs, chants and rhymes.

Other noticeable traits include whether your child like to touch things and physically move about, if they have lots of energy. These children need a lot of activities and you could play games to get them moving or running around, acting out rhymes or stories or even dancing!

On the other hand, there are other quieter children who prefer a different set of activities. They may have a good vocabulary and be a good reader. Word games, crosswords, word searches, anagrams and tongue twisters would be good to encourage these children.

Other children require logical, clear explanations of rules and patterns, or like to work out the rules for themselves. They may be good at maths too. For these children activities such as word puzzles, reading and writing puzzles, problem-solving, putting things in order or categories and computer games provide ideal opportunities for learning.

The type of interaction that your child prefer can help them in the way they learn too. Children who are outgoing and sociable and can learn a language quickly because they want to communicate. They are not worried about making mistakes.

Children who are quieter and more reflective learn by listening and observing what is happening. They fear making mistakes and will want to be sure about their answers.

If your child is outgoing they may do best learning in groups with other children. A quieter child need more private, quiet time to feel more secure about learning a language. A bedtime story in English will be helpful.

Children can usually only concentrate for short periods of time – when you are doing an activity with your child, using flashcards for example, or doing a worksheet, make sure that you stop or change activity when your child is bored or restless. This might be after only a few minutes.

In the next article, we will discuss more in detail for these three characteristics. We do hope you will find them informative and helpful.