What the snake oil salesmen will/won't tell you

[StringerBell]

But here hangs a big question about the nature of good teaching: is your husband in any way disadvantaged when presented with a diagram?

He's not disadvantaged by a diagram as long as there is a verbal explanation. The diagram to him is more or less inconsequential.

Here's another example: let's say the two of us need to learn about a complex topic (radioactivity).

-He could listen to an hour long lecture discussing a lot of details about the ins and outs of radioactivity, and without taking any notes, he could understand and then explain everything that was said. If I were to listen to that same lecture, I'd be lost after a few minutes.

-However, if that same lecture were written in a journal or research paper, I could read through it, understand everything reasonably well, and then explain it without a problem. He would struggle significantly more with the text as opposed to just listening to the audio, and it would take him tremendous effort, after which his brain would be fried and he wouldn't be able to concentrate for the rest of the day. He is capable of absorbing a tremendous amount of information auditorily but struggles more with textual info.

I know of plenty of people who visualize words and letters when they speak or spell words aloud, so I don't think that I'm an outlier with this. I tend to think in pictures, and I think this is relatively common among people who consider themselves to be visual learners. If you took 2 groups of people and gave one just auditory input and the other just visual input, some people would do much better in one group as opposed to the other. There are probably a lot of people who don't have a strong affinity for one format vs. the other, but I think there are plenty that do.

[leosmith]

As a non-fluent learner, you cannot hear these sounds

Disagree

The brain throws data away that it considers irrelevant.

That sounds more like it.

studies have shown multiple times that visual memory is superior to auditory

I have a hard time believing this as it applies to building vocabulary in conversation. If you were to tell me that people who reviewed a vocabulary list before or after listening to a passage had better retention than those who merely listened, I'd definitely believe it though.

For building vocabulary in conversation, as opposed to just building it to read literature or something, I think we mostly acquire it through listening. I also believe that almost everyone benefits from seeing/reading/studying the written form, some more than others. The ones who consider themselves visual learners are probably helped a lot from it. But I think even for them, without listening they are doomed.

I found out that one can change from being a 'visual' to 'aural' learner when I studied Japanese. That was when I forced myself to stop using romaji (romanized Japanese script) and start using Kana (Japanese phonetic script). Although Kana is the easiest non-roman script that I know, it was my first one and brutally hard. Being able to read new words was of little to know help, since it was such a struggle. So I relied almost completely on sound recall - I had to if I wanted to speak anytime soon. I also used mnemonics heavily, but even those were sound based. Long story short, I succeeded. Vocabulary acquisition wasn't as smooth as with languages that I used a roman script for, but it wasn't far off. This experience taught me the degree that visual memory helps me is based on my personal circumstances, and not some sort of inborn 'visual' vs 'aural' gene. You can learn to be the other 'type', although it's not easy, which I believe means they aren't really 'types'.

[Dragon27]

I have a hard time believing this as it applies to building vocabulary in conversation.

To be fair, these studies usually can be directly applied only to some specific situations whose conditions are similar to the conditions of the experiments that are used to provide the results of the studies - kind of like "we took a hundred people and asked them to look at pictures/listen to sounds and then an hour/day/week later we asked them to recall what they've seen/heard". Pretty simple (to avoid all the complexities and subtle intricacies of real-life tasks like learning lots of vocabulary/phrases/idioms for a year or two in order to be able to read books/watch TV series in a target language, etc.), and the results should always be taken with "what did they actually show" question in mind.

For building vocabulary in conversation, as opposed to just building it to read literature or something, I think we mostly acquire it through listening. I also believe that almost everyone benefits from seeing/reading/studying the written form, some more than others. The ones who consider themselves visual learners are probably helped a lot from it. But I think even for them, without listening they are doomed.

Yeah, and we still memorize (and acquire) lots of data (that we don't always pay attention to) from listening to these conversational vocabulary/idiomatic phrases - like intonation, and context in which they could be used.
Also, it's curious how the memory of a strictly visual learner (the one who can't memorize stuff from hearing) works. They cannnot memorize any audio input at all? I'm sure they can, how else would they be able to train their listening comprehension/pronunciation. Or they can put audio to their memory, but can't keep it there without some visual data to "anchor" it? So the brain, maybe, just considers aural data irrevelant, if it wasn't "confirmed" by some visual representation, and throws it away?
I still think this is just a skill, that could be trained, if a person has enough persistence (and, perhaps, more importantly, confidence).

I found out that one can change from being a 'visual' to 'aural' learner when I studied Japanese. That was when I forced myself to stop using romaji (romanized Japanese script) and start using Kana (Japanese phonetic script). Although Kana is the easiest non-roman script that I know, it was my first one and brutally hard. Being able to read new words was of little to know help, since it was such a struggle. So I relied almost completely on sound recall - I had to if I wanted to speak anytime soon. I also used mnemonics heavily, but even those were sound based. Long story short, I succeeded. Vocabulary acquisition wasn't as smooth as with languages that I used a roman script for, but it wasn't far off. This experience taught me the degree that visual memory helps me is based on my personal circumstances, and not some sort of inborn 'visual' vs 'aural' gene. You can learn to be the other 'type', although it's not easy, which I believe means they aren't really 'types'.

I also thought it would be interesting for a strong visual learner to put themselves through an experiment (like, a year-or-two-long one) and try to learn a language using only the audio, without the help of the visual representation of the language, like texts in the target language (but make an exception for pictures and written translations or instructions (grammar, phonetic, etc.) in a native/well-studied second language, but no text/subtitles/spelling or anything like that in the target language). If the brain realized that it can't rely on the help from visual representation of the target language, it would have no other choice but to activate and train its abilities to work with the aural data. How well it would perform? It can't just not memorize at least something after so much work.
I imagine that such a learner would still invent and use some kind of visual representation of the target language (or employ some already existing system like IPA), and train their ability to break down the words they want to remember into phonemes on the fly (or imagine how they could be spelled).

[Cainntear]

studies have shown multiple times that visual memory is superior to auditory

I have a hard time believing this as it applies to building vocabulary in conversation. If you were to tell me that people who reviewed a vocabulary list before or after listening to a passage had better retention than those who merely listened, I'd definitely believe it though.

Dragon27's talking about general ability, which is what learning styles claim to relate to.
His argument is simple:
Everyone can process more data visually than by any other channel, so there can be no such thing as anything other than a visual learner. The conclusion we're supposed to take from this fact isn't that everything should be learned visually (it shouldn't!), but rather that VARK learning style theory contradicts known scientific fact.

This experience taught me the degree that visual memory helps me is based on my personal circumstances, and not some sort of inborn 'visual' vs 'aural' gene. You can learn to be the other 'type', although it's not easy, which I believe means they aren't really 'types'.

...which is a big problem with believing in learning styles: you push yourself to contort the information/techniques you're teaching to match some idea of the student, rather than preparing the student to deal with the information in the way most suited to what's being taught.

Teach colours visually, teach music aurally, teach football kinaesthetically. Supplement these with support from different modalities, sure, but once you pigeonhole fixed "styles", everything goes out the window.

[Cainntear]

I know of plenty of people who visualize words and letters when they speak or spell words aloud, so I don't think that I'm an outlier with this.

I looked up last night -- "strong automatic tickertaping" (i.e. seeing the words you're hearing without conscious effort to do so) came out at 3-4% of the population in the most optimistic study -- that means that you're not going to see even 1 tickertaper in every language class, which makes you an outlier in my book.

From your messages, though, I can see you have quite an academic bent, and a lot of neurodivergent people end up in academia (says the sometimes-university English teacher who's taking a career break to do a second masters... )

[sirgregory]

The FSI has experience with taking whole classes of learners to a certain level in a certain amount of time. But what doesn't get said too often: they are not classes of random learners. They are classes of preselected people, who qualify for a certain kind of jobs. People with a certain level of education, perhaps people having passed some entrance testing, and so on.

I think they also generally already speak one foreign language?

The average is 2.4. It's a massive difference from a monolingual beginner.

Recently I asked my father about his experiences at DLI (Defense Language Institute). What he said corresponds pretty well with what you all are saying. He studied Mandarin Chinese there in the 80s. He said he was selected for it after taking an aptitude test. It involved some sort of made up language and it was designed to see how well you could detect grammatical patterns, etc. He also already knew Japanese. Studying was his full-time job and he spent hours a day in class with native instructors. He was there a little shy of a year and ended up around a 2/2+ level.

[IronMike]

The FSI has experience with taking whole classes of learners to a certain level in a certain amount of time. But what doesn't get said too often: they are not classes of random learners. They are classes of preselected people, who qualify for a certain kind of jobs. People with a certain level of education, perhaps people having passed some entrance testing, and so on.

I think they also generally already speak one foreign language?

The average is 2.4. It's a massive difference from a monolingual beginner.

Recently I asked my father about his experiences at DLI (Defense Language Institute). What he said corresponds pretty well with what you all are saying. He studied Mandarin Chinese there in the 80s. He said he was selected for it after taking an aptitude test. It involved some sort of made up language and it was designed to see how well you could detect grammatical patterns, etc. He also already knew Japanese. Studying was his full-time job and he spent hours a day in class with native instructors. He was there a little shy of a year and ended up around a 2/2+ level.

Your father is talking about one of two different tests. One is the DLAB (Defense Language Aptitude Battery) which (supposedly) tests your ability to learn a language fast. Half of the DLAB is a made-up language and the other half is English changed.

The other is (was) the Cat Ape Rat test, where they taught you a bit of Chinese, Arabic, and Russian and quickly tested you on it. Then, based on your result in that test along with the languages available at the time that you were showing up at DLI, you were assigned a language. In my case (1986), I did well in the Cat Ape and Rat test, but the only languages available at the time were Russian (50+ slots) and Romanian (5) for us Air Force guys. So I got Russian. The month prior to me there were 6 languages available and the month after there were 8 or 9 languages available.

[sporedandroid]

I think VARK learning styles are overused a lot. Growing up I had trouble focusing in class, trouble with English because of speaking Spanish and I enjoyed doing art. So I was quickly labeled a visual learner and labeled with language problems. I also struggled in French immersion, but that mainly had to do with anxiety.

Now I think it’s silly to label myself a visual, auditory or kinesthetic learner. I just do whatever activity is most enjoyable or the least unenjoyable. For example I really don’t enjoy doing activities in workbooks. I just can’t do very much with information I just learned. Maybe it reinforces memory for someone else.

Maybe it has some possible benefit to me, but so far I dislike it too much for it to be worth it. I’d rather just use anki, since it’s less unenjoyable and probably more efficient for my personal goals. I don’t mind repetition. I can also tolerate dry material if I feel it is helping me with my goals. Memorizing a vocabulary list for something I’m interested in reading or listening to is fine. Memorizing a bunch of touristy phrases that lack any vocabulary that will help me with my goals will just frustrate me. Maybe this has to do with my “learning style”, but maybe it’s just personal preference. It really shouldn’t matter.

Maybe those sorts of activities will be useful at another stage when I want to do output. By then I’ll probably figure out more fun or less painful ways of doing it. I know I have to constantly update the way I study depending on my skill level and the language I’m learning. Like when I first studied Hebrew I found it extremely hard to do sentences. I just found them overwhelming, so I preferred to learn just words. When I first learn vocabulary for any language I find words are weirdly scrambled and just very hard to remember.
Now I prefer sentences since my vocabulary is large enough so that the average sentence I come across has 0-3 new words. Any more unknown words and I won’t enjoy studying that sentence. I do find it weird when I know all the words or word families in a sentence, but can’t understand it. I don’t know if doing more sentences alone will fix this or if I need other methods.

I’m in the stage of trying out new methods and I find it hard to do focused and disciplined study when I am trying new methods. So I give myself permission to take a break from studying sentences and just try new methods. I kind of assume other people can continue their usual study routine AND try out new methods or work out technical issues. I can’t.

[Iversen]

I looked up last night -- "strong automatic tickertaping" (i.e. seeing the words you're hearing without conscious effort to do so) came out at 3-4% of the population in the most optimistic study -- that means that you're not going to see even 1 tickertaper in every language class, which makes you an outlier in my book.

Count me in between the outliers: I have dealt with quite a lot of new languages, and while I'm still trying to learn to understand their spoken versions I do what I have dubbed "listening like a bloodhound" - i.e. listening closely without frantically trying to understand the general meaning. Instead I try to parse the stream of sounds into words and sentences, and while I do this I often see written words flicker through my mind as black letters on a grey screen. What is more, after many years where I have composed music and written down themes for my music collection I also see written notes when I listen to music so this visual way of thinking is not limited to languages. On the other hand I don't see colours or detect odd flagrances in the air when I listen to music so it probably can't be explained away as on more case of classical inborn synaesthesia. Anyway, I don't expect any commercial learning system to be able to exploit these mechanisms - not even a system I once read about where you are supposed to learn languages in new age-like fashion with smells and sounds and soft cushions and all that (was it 'total response' or something like that?).

By the way, I was surprised to see that anybody actually had tried to estimate how many persons see words on their internal screen while listening, but since we learn to speak before we learn to read it is not surprising to find that this phenomenon is much rarer than hearing words inside your head while you read. Actually I have a couple of languages where I'm almost certain that the sounds I hear while reading don't represent the real pronunciation of those languages, and in principle it must be possible to read a foreign language using mental sounds that have nothing at all in common with the spoken version of the language in question - maybe that's what paleolinguists do ... ah dunno. I'm however sure that if you systematically listen to music instead of listening to your target languages while studying the written languages (as I do) you will inexorably drift towards camp of the visual learners. In fact I forget new words I just hear - I extend my vocabularies through wordlists and other written tools.

And with this slightly atypical learning behaviour I'm not an easy prey for those devious snake oils traders. They generally try to sell me methods that are based on listening to a few sentences and then parrot those, and that's not how I learn languages.