Audible Learning Styles
Students are individuals, and they often learn in ways vastly different from each other. For students who are audible learners, the learning process is most successful when it happens through listening. Most classroom environments make use of a number of media and learning materials to carry out the education process. For auditory learners, a lack of listening-based material can compromise their ability to understand and retain the content of a lesson. A number of ways exist to incorporate audible learning styles into the teaching process.
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Reading Aloud
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Encouraging audible learners to read aloud when they learn written material can help them to digest the information. As well as helping students take in the material, this can help their reading skills, which sometimes need a little extra attention. From the teaching point of view, it's essential to relate anything vital audibly as well as visually to make it accessible to audible learners, but having them read aloud also is helpful.
Using Oral and Aural Exercises
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Using oral and aural exercises can help audible learners. Exercises in which they listen and then perhaps have to speak about what they heard maximizes aural skills. Testing the students orally rather than in writing also can be helpful because audible learning is about speaking as well as listening. Having audible learning children work in groups can be productive, encouraging them to discuss material that is explored.
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Recording
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In some cases, recording material and making it available to audible learners can help them to understand its content more easily. This depends on the material's topic, but a useful exercise is playing a recording and then getting students to relate what they learned from the material. If students have difficulty, it can be helpful to allow them control over the playback of the audio recordings, which lets them take the learning process at their own pace.
Speaking
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Speaking is an activity that audible learners tend to enjoy and, therefore, perform well. Using speaking activities within lessons is an effective way to ensure these students are included. Encouraging a good level of dialogue both between teacher and learner and between learners builds on the natural skills audible learners tend to exhibit. If they have difficulty reading, encouraging them to whisper to themselves while they read can help.
Balancing Other Material
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In general, the key strategy to facilitate audible learning is to ensure that material is always presented in a way that these learners find accessible. If any part of a lesson relies on material that is represented only in a non-aural form, such as only in written form, it may pose a barrier for audible learners. When audible learning is given a focus, however, it should build on non-aural formats to equip the students with a broader skill-set for learning.
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References
Resources
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