Dia dhaoibh!

Are these sorts of assessments accurate, or just a bit of fun? That’s the dilemma I’ve been grappling with over the past week. To be honest, I’m not totally convinced that language learning styles are as much of a thing as these assessments make them out to be. I’d almost put them in the same category as astrology and horoscopes (no offence) a survey made up of vague assessments and contradictions that leave you with vague conclusions about yourself. I’m not sure if it’s even that I don’t believe they are accurate, more that, even if they, I don’t particularly see the value/ relevance in them. Too cynical? Probably. However learning style and learning strategies have long been a topic of discussion and research with researchers attempting to find factors that affect an individual’s learning style and strategies (Viriya et al., 2014).

For me personalizing has always been about taking the time to write out my notes in pretty hardbacks, having colour schemes for different topics/ sections and using a variety of colours and illustrations. I thought everyone enjoyed/wrote out notes this way. That was until a friend of mine mentioned that while studying, she used the creative note taking as a way to distract the right side of her brain, so that her left logical side could get more work done! For me this made total sense. I’m a very creative person and the right side of my brain constantly needs to be occupied by something so that the other can concentrate on learning (Witelson, 1973, p.641).

Reservations aside, I feel like the assessment I took did accurately reflect my language learning style. That is:

Reflective: 1

Intuitive: 9

Visual: 1

Global: 11

I am both an active learner and a reflective learner at different times. I prefer to try things out rather than think about them but also prefer to learn/ study alone. The “trying things out” part did surprise me. I feel as though if I had taken this test two years ago, prior to taking a gap year and starting college I would have definitely been more on the “thinking it through” side of things. The test also concluded that I was very intuitive rather than sensing, meaning that I prefer possibilities and relationships rather than facts. I can confirm this is very true (and maybe why I love studying literature so much but can’t stand learning grammar)

All in all, it was interesting to see and relate to the results. I feel they were pretty accurate and I maybe shouldn’t have been so harsh to begin with.

Slán go fóill,

Saoirse

Chayata Viriya, & Sutthirak Sapsirin. (2014). GENDER DIFFERENCES IN LANGUAGE LEARNING STYLE AND LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGIES. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 3(2), 77–88.

Witelson, S.F. and Pallie, W., 1973. Left hemisphere specialization for language in the newborn: Neuroanatomical evidence of asymmetry. Brain, 96(3), pp.641-646.