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- Brain Hemisphericity
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These differences have a strong relation with learning styles, choice of career and academic achievement. That is why teachers have to be aware of these factors in order to provide students with different types of activities that can suit their specific learning needs. For instance, if we have left-brained students we can prepare some activities in which students can work on their own constructing rules or designing conceptual maps, etc. And if we have right-brained students we can incentivate, for instance, creative writing, group work, presentations, etc.
If you want to learn more about Brain lateralization, CLICK HERE
- Learning Styles
According to Spada and Lightbrown (2006, 59) “learning style has been used to describe an individual’s natural, habitual, and preferred way of absorbing, processing, and retaining new information.” These learning styles are influenced by genetic factors, our experience of the world, and the large and small cultures we are immersed in. This is why we can find several kinds of learning styles, which have been characterized through time and which vary from one student to another. For instance, in language learning, students have different ways of solving problems and dealing with the new information presented in the context of the classroom and outside of it. Some students prefer to learn rules by heart by using their memory, others prefer to understand the information as a whole rather than divide it into several parts, etc. Every person has an inherent way of learning which is formed from a combination of unique characteristics that interact with each other during the learning process. And although there are many different classifications according to perceptual or cognitive features, it is very common to find one individual who uses several styles at the same time. A summary of these different learning styles and their particular features can be found in the following table:
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If you wish to see this table more clearly just click on it.
The main idea regarding this topic is that as teachers, we have to be aware of these very important characteristics in our students, because they will definitely affect the way we teach. In fact, if we want to be good teachers, we have to adapt our way of teaching, materials and activities to their learning needs, which will be conditioned by their learning styles. For instance, if we have visual learners, we need to incorporate visual aids to our lessons, like graphs, conceptual maps, lists, pictures, etc. If we have aural learners we need to use tapes and videos and if we have kinesthetic students, we can provide them with TPR (Total Physical Response) activities, competitions, games, experiments, etc.
In the case of Field Dependent students, we can choose group activities in which they can develop their social skills by discussing different topics and giving their opinion about them. On the other hand, if we have Field Independent students, we can make them work by their own in order to provide solutions for a specific situation, etc. In short, we need to adapt everything involved in the classroom to fit our students needs, which goes from our teaching techniques to the materials we choose and the activities we plan for them.