Learning Style Survey--University of Minnesota

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Xenops
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Learning Style Survey--University of Minnesota

Postby Xenops » Sun Jan 16, 2022 3:10 am

Here is a survey you can take see what kind of language learner you are. :) I found for myself, I tend to enjoy "exploration" more so than going down a prescribed format.

https://carla.umn.edu/maxsa/documents/LearningStyleSurvey_MAXSA_IG.pdf
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Re: Learning Style Survey--University of Minnesota

Postby Iversen » Sun Jan 16, 2022 1:27 pm

Quite interesting. I did the whole thing even though it had to be done manually (which in itself says something about my learning style), and I got some results. The most clearcut ones were 1) that I am fundamentally visually oriented - and then you may ask: why do I then spend so much time on music? Solution: I only collect instrumental music, and I find singing as nauseating as defecating. 2) 'Introvert' was also a clear winner. The mere presence of other people is enough to harm my learning, and I have almost entirely stopped going to concerts because there is an audience there. On the other hand I don't find it difficult to do lectures, mostly because it then is me who speaks (or spoke, since I have stopped doing lectures for reasons which aren't relevant here), and just have conversations with foreigners is also OK because I don't see that as a learning activity.

3) I was categorized as extremely deductive (10 to 1), but that's not totally true - I do like to see a rule and then search for examples, but it is also OK to get 10 examples and then find the common ground between them - which isn't always the one in the books. For instance I once put a couple of Dutch sentences into the ACapela speech synthethizer, which could (and probably still can) let different voices say them, and I discovered that the ways the Dutch pronounce the "ui" diphtong are much more varied than my grammar books allowed for.

4) I was also categorized as extremely field independent, i.e. I always try to isolate the relevant elements from the background noise. And then you might skip back to section VI, 'synthethizing' versus 'analytic', where the former got more points, albeit not with a broad margin. 'Synthethizing' here means that you can guess meanings, predict outcomes and notice similarities. Actually that's what you have to do when reading or listening to dialects or stuff in related languages which you haven't studied yet. 'Analytic' permits you to pull ideas apart, but also to do logical analysis and contrast tasks - which I see as an implicit limitation that ties you to studying stuff in known languages. But to "isolate relevant elements" you need to be able to do analytical thinking, and I think I'm quite good at that.

My results on most other parameters had one winner, but the loser was never at the rock bottom level. So I'm mostly 'random' - which may seem odd with all my wordlists and green grammar sheets, but I do those at random times. And apparently I tend to 'closure' (against 'openess'), which means planning ahead. Gosh! I definitely don't do that in my study planning, but once I randomly do one of my standard tasks I know exactly what to do. And when I travel I study the destination so much in detail that I can improvise along the way. These two questions show a weakness in personality tests which I also have observed elsewhere. For instance you are normally classified as detail-oriented OR globally orientated, but when I see details I always have in mind how they relate to the general rules - and the tests haven't taken into account that you can be an extremist in both directions.

Which leads to the general question: are such 'learner type tests' totally superfluous or even misleading? And I don't think so. In the old HTLAL days I was involved in a discussion about this, and my original position was that there were types, and they were as deeply engrained into the mind of an individual as anything else you might come up with (like your sexual orientation or attitude to broccoli) - although most learners weren't extremists. I modified this point of view slightly insofar that I accepted that the type could be changed under extreme duress - like if I was dropped by parachute into the jungle without a dictionary. I guess I would then have to learn from social interaction and aural input, and with time I might adapt to those conditions. But it is dangerous to claim that any pupil is totally flexible because that would amount to forcing the pupils to accept the rules and habits of even the most extremist and inflexible teacher. At any given time we do represent a gamut of learning styles, and forcing learners to accept the teaching style of one random (and possibly inflexible) teacher is problematic.

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Re: Learning Style Survey--University of Minnesota

Postby luke » Sun Jan 16, 2022 3:45 pm

Heavier Weighted Learning Styles wrote:You rely more on the sense of sight, and you learn best through visual means (books, video, charts, pictures).

You probably like to do more independent work (studying or reading by yourself or learning with a computer) or enjoy working with one other person you know well.

You are most likely more future-oriented, prefer what can be over what is, like to speculate about possibilities, enjoy abstract thinking, and tend to disfavor step-by-step instruction.

You enjoy discovery learning (in which you pick up information naturally) and prefer to relax and enjoy your learning without concern for deadlines or rules.

You are likely to clump material together in order to remember it by eliminating or reducing differences, and by focusing almost exclusively on similarities. You are likely to blur similar memories and to merge new experiences readily with previous ones.

You tend to deal with information in a more holistic or gestalt way. Consequently, you may have greater difficulty in separating or abstracting material from its context. You work best without distractions.

You learn material more effectively if you conceptualize aspects of it, such as the grammar system, in metaphorical terms. You make the material more comprehensible by developing and applying an extended metaphor to it (e.g., visualizing the grammar system of a given language as an engine that can be assembled and disassembled).

That was interesting. It took a little time. Not sure what to make of "conceptualizing the grammar system in metaphorical terms" means. It seems like the developer of the test "force fit" the term "grammar system" in there. I'll have to think about that.

It seems like a valid test, if a summary like above is helpful.

I'd like to hear more ways one might could put this sort of analysis into action. One thing that came to mind with the "holistic gestalt" was, "you're better off reading what the author wrote, as opposed to what someone else wrote about what the author wrote". :lol:

Also, my recent extrapolation from Teango's 3 Day Projects, that is, 2-3 week projects, makes sense.
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Re: Learning Style Survey--University of Minnesota

Postby Iversen » Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:16 pm

luke wrote:One thing that came to mind with the "holistic gestalt" was, "you're better off reading what the author wrote, as opposed to what someone else wrote about what the author wrote"


I read the passages about holism differently. This notion has its main role in the analysis of extremely complex systems, and the nasty interpretation is that if you can't say anything precise then just mumble something general which can't be tested empirically. :lol: In medicine a holistic approach would be to recommend people to eat supposedly healthy foods, do exercise, think positive thoughts and things like that, and as long as I'm allowed to eat my daily meat it may at the very best harmless, maybe even beneficial. In language learning a holistic approach would probably be something like learning through lots of input rather than from grammars and other structured tools... and then hope for the best. Maybe it will work.

On the other hand reading "reading what the author wrote" would be recommendable in all cases where you can understand that thing (and it isn't unbearably long and boring like medieval chronicles or the novels of Balzac). Since you can't be expected to remember all the details you will be nilly-willy be your own summarist, and if you haven't quite understood the original source then it may be worth also to have a peek in the summaries done by knowledgeable and trustworthy specialists to see whether you are on the right course. But there are cases where you have to be content with "what someone else wrote", simply because you haven't got access to the original source or you can't understand it. The point then is to evaluate on your own whether you trust the commentators, and there is so much false and misleading information out there that you shouldn't believe anything blindly. But that has not really really anything to do with holism, rather with abstaining from gullibility.
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Re: Learning Style Survey--University of Minnesota

Postby ourrafl » Mon Jan 24, 2022 10:10 am

Interesting!

I've got almost all the dimensions with balanced tendancies. The possible reason might be I never choose never or always cuz there are always exceptions. The one dimension with largest difference is Sharpener:Leveler=4:7.

And I'm kinda surprised by the result that my visual:auditory:tactile/kinesthetic is 20:20:20. But actually I feel I'm still mostly on visual when learning, whether it's language or other things.
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Re: Learning Style Survey--University of Minnesota

Postby sirgregory » Wed Jan 26, 2022 11:53 pm

It was a bit long, but I am a sucker for these things.

The dimensions that were most skewed for me were the following:

#1 Senses - pretty balanced but some tilt toward auditory
#2 Introversion over Extroversion
#3 Intuitive over Sequential
#4 Open over Closed
#6 Synthesizing over Analytic
#8 Deductive over Inductive

The assessment on 2, 3, 4 is exactly what I would have expected. On number 6 I don't really see those things as being in conflict but maybe I'm missing something. On #8, I probably do lean deductive as I usually like to use an explicit grammar-oriented book as my primary source. But I also like "natural" method readers and Assimil-type courses because they contain a substantial amount of text in the target language, but I think of them more as a supplement or follow-up resource. I certainly could use something like Assimil or LLPSI as the primary but it feels a bit "backwards" to me.
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Re: Learning Style Survey--University of Minnesota

Postby Caromarlyse » Thu Jan 27, 2022 1:37 pm

From what's in the post above, I got almost identical results to Iversen in re: the parts he highlighted (apart from having both visual and tactile preferences), so there's hope for my language learning yet!
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Re: Learning Style Survey--University of Minnesota

Postby Magnoliophyta » Thu Jan 27, 2022 9:04 pm

This is an interesting survey, and I like that the document explains how our learning style preferences don't have to be seen as constraints or limitations -- our preferred ways of learning can change over time, the different learning styles each have their own advantages, and we can stand to benefit from spending some time developing the learning style categories that we're not typically inclined to prefer.

One of my strongest preferences was on the "sharpener" versus "leveler" distinction of "how I commit material to memory": I am very much on the "sharpener" side of things, according to the survey, and tend to form discrete memories on the basis of details and differences; I also am concerned with "accuracy and getting it all right," even if that comes at the expense of "expediency," according to the results page.

I've never really thought in those terms before, but this doesn't surprise me. Especially when it comes to grammar, I tend to want to learn things well and in deep detail the first time around, even if this means I spend a rather long time studying and practicing with the details of a topic or exercise before I move on to the next thing.

I also think that this tendency towards "sharpness" of detail (sometimes at the expense of efficiency) applies to how I communicate in a language that I'm learning: When I'm speaking in a foreign language, I tend to be very careful about grammatical accuracy, even if it means that I'll get a bit slowed down at times when I need a moment to think something through. (I'm thinking especially of things like German adjective declensions here... it is one thing to know the rules in theory, and quite another to spontaneously put them into practice! This is the kind of detail that I tend to have to actively pay attention to when I'm speaking).

Of course, I'm not perfect 100% of the time with these kinds of details -- and, likewise, I'm not 100% skewed towards being a "sharpener," according to the survey results.
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