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Learning Styles and Spelling

Sarah Williams

 

 

Introduction

There is a great deal of material available on learning styles which has been very clearly discussed in the context of dyslexic students by Tilly Mortimore (2003). The conference workshop concentrated on a learning styles inventory (VARK) (Fleming and Mills 1992) which determines people’s preferences for giving and receiving information, and then showed how those preferences could be used in the spelling of problematic words.

 

     

 

Don’t ask me how to spell. When you’re dyslexic, ALL words spell TROUBLE!

 

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VARK

Fleming and Mills (1992) looked at multi-modal information input and output styles, using an inventory they called ‘VARK’ after the initial letters of its four main components: Visual, Auditory/Oral, Read/Write and Kinaesthetic. Gillingham (1969), in her pioneering work with dyslexic children, used the initials VAKT (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic and tactile) when describing multi-sensory teaching practices. Many trainers have focused on visual, aural and kinaesthetic characteristics, widely used in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) (Knight 1995; O’Connor and McDermott 1996), but Fleming subdivided the visual mode into iconic (symbolic) and text, creating four possibilities for preferences. This is clearly an important subdivision in education beyond the primary level.

 

In a literate society one might expect that most people would prefer to input and output information through read/write methods, but in fact the majority of people are multi-modal, even academics who use high level literacy skills on a regular basis (Fleming 1992). If people are expected to take in and give out information in ways which do not suit them it might be the case, as with the findings of Pask (1976b) and Pask and Scott (1979), who looked at serialist / holist learning and teaching styles, that the results would be disappointing.

 

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VARK questionnaire results consistently find that the students in our teaching rooms are very diverse; even a group of similarly trained or educated professionals with comparable job descriptions will show a wide variety of (sometimes surprising) preferences. We cannot assume that everyone learns in the same way, and experience suggests that it is not helpful to offer or use strategies that lie outside students’ preferences (e.g. mind-maps may not help if they do not like material presented visually; mnemonics may not be useful if they find a preponderance of letters and words confusing).

 

It needs to be said here that ‘preferences’ are clearly not always the same as ‘strengths’, but preferred strategies are often the most successful. We need to help our students to develop their own strategies, not impose those that work for us. Many students become much more successful if they develop a range of study strategies based upon their preferences, but many do not know what those are unless they are systematically introduced to the possibilities.

 

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The VARK inventory ©

The VARK inventory (Fleming 2001) consists of a questionnaire which asks people to tick boxes according to their preferences for giving and receiving information. The thirty-two questions include:

 

You are about to give directions to a person who is standing with you. She is staying in an hotel and is coming to visit you later. She has a rental car. Would you:

You are not sure whether a word should be spelled ‘dependent’ or dependant’. Would you:

 

You are about to purchase a new stereo. Other than price, what else would influence your decision?

Recall a time in your life when you learned to do something new. Avoid physical skills like riding a bike. How did you learn best. By:

 

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Participants can tick as many boxes as seem true for them, and some will score very highly in all categories, whilst others may have lowish scores in most categories and a very clear preference for only one. Scores for a, b, c, and d are added up and a formula applied. ‘a’ is Visual, ‘b’ is Auditory/Oral, ‘c’ is Read/Write and ‘d’ is Kinaesthetic.

 

Fleming and Mills suggest that particular attention should be paid to zero [or minus] scores of any mode. Zero scores are unusual and the respondent may have an interesting story to tell.  They further suggest that, like many skills, we improve by ‘doing’; as we need skills, so we develop them. Differences may lessen as individuals mature. Work experiences and life experiences will blur the boundaries as people learn to use visual, aural, read/write and kinaesthetic modes equally well. Preferences may be masked by experiences (Fleming and Mills 1992).

 

Clearly when administering inventories of this kind it must be kept in mind that a one-off exercise like this can only provide a ‘snapshot’ on a particular day, but by asking people to then think about how they best remember the things that have interested them throughout their lives and see if that matches their VARK scores, you often get responses which confirm the findings. For example, very few academics have Read/Write as their major mode, despite the fact that they read and write all the time. Thus it is not about capability, but preference.

 

Pictures?                        Words? 

 

Songs?                           Events?  

 

Stories?                Objects?

 

People?                 Music?   

 

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 Visual (V)

Auditory/Oral (A)

Read/Write (R)

Kinaesthetic (K)

 

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Using VARK to improve spelling

Spelling isn’t simply about letters on a page. We draw on many aspects of ourselves and our memory banks in order to spell accurately, and it is an extremely complex procedure. Many people (particularly those who are dyslexic) did not ‘catch’ spelling at school, and although the majority of words follow spelling rules, the rules themselves are complex and have frequent exceptions. Students at college and University have to learn a new vocabulary for the subject(s) they are studying. For some this can prove very difficult. They need to acquire strategies in order to spell their key, jargon, technical words more effectively, especially if there is a health and safety issue.

 

Students need to decide when it is important that a word is spelt accurately (does it matter if they put a ‘u’ in forty? and why isn’t there one anyway?). It does, however, matter if a physiotherapist writes abductor instead of adductor (‘b’ and ‘d’ are the most commonly confused letters for dyslexic people), or a nurse reads antussin for antestin (one is for a sore throat, whilst the other is a male hormone). You would change the sense of a piece dramatically if you use meretricious instead of meritorious.

So how can we use VARK to help with spelling? 

 

                

 

What have apples, goats, irons, eggs, queens, elephants, coffee, cakes and umbrellas got to do with the words we want our students to use?

 

               

 

 

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What would help YOUR students?

 

Anaesthetic

 

Remember the ‘a’ and ‘e’. Maybe a rhyme or a song will help:

 

From the Greek, ‘a’ and ‘e’,       

 

but it’s all Greek to me!  

 

 

Maybe an image will help, of an ambulance rushing to the A & E - Accident & Emergency - where they use anaesthetics:

 

 

 

 

Perhaps a story will do the trick:

 

A    n    a    e    s    t    h    e    t    i   c

        

 

When I come down to breakfast, I feel a little anaesthetised, because I’ve had a good sleep, then I have a glass of apple juice while my eggs are boiling, so ‘a’ comes just before ‘e’.

 

Catastrophe

 

How do I remember that it’s a ‘phe’ on the end, when it could be ‘fy’ or ‘fie’ or ‘phie’ or ‘phy’ or ‘phee’ or ‘fee’?

 

I could try and remember that it’s a ‘he’ on the end. Here’s a kinaesthetic example; a real life scenario.

 

It’s my brother-in-law, standing at the kitchen door, shouting at a cat that’s digging up the annuals he only planted this morning! 

 

It’s a catastrophe!!!!

 

The cat made my brother-in-law go into a strop.

 

He went into a strop about a cat.

 

Cat-a-strop-he  

 

And what about  ‘iron’  in the env-iron-ment?

          

Or I am on a  ‘bus’ in bus-I-ness?

 

                     

 

A queen never goes out without her umbrella.

 

          

 

To keep me happy it is necessary for me to have coffee with two sugars.

                                                 

 

Rhythm Has Your Two Hips Moving.

                             

 

‘i’ before ‘e’ [piece] except after ‘c’, [receive] except when it rhymes with ‘weight’.

 

           [and what about height?]

 

The exceptions can still catch you out, even when you know the rules!

 

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Case study: Donna

Donna is a dyslexic physiotherapy student. Knowledge of technical and medical jargon is crucial, not only to her success on her degree course, but also for the recovery of patients in her clinical practice placements and future employment. She has to make hand-written notes of sessions she undertakes. These may be passed to another physiotherapist in the same hospital, or in some cases to another institution if the patient is moved. It is therefore extremely important that Donna makes accurate notes.

 

The VARK inventory shows Donna to have distinct Visual and Kinaesthetic preferences. This is not at all unusual for those who are in practical subjects. It would be a surprise if it were otherwise, especially if, like Donna, they were also dyslexic. Physiotherapy students are encouraged to buy charts of the body, one showing the skeleton and ligaments and the other showing the muscles, to have on their study walls. For Donna, these charts are extremely helpful.

 

In conversation about visual techniques for note-taking and essay planning, such as mind-mapping, Donna tells me that she does not like mind-maps, because they are ‘messy’. I can relate to this. I am also Visual/Kinaesthetic, but like things to be orderly and neat. Buzan-type mind-maps (2000), which seem to wander all over the page, do not suit my way of thinking. However, there are mind-maps which give the same freedom of planning but are more regimented, such as the ones Cottrell (2003) demonstrates in the book which she produced with dyslexic students in mind. Showing Donna these ideas gives her another view of mind-maps and she decides to give them another try, for planning reports, essays, presentations and revision.

 

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When it comes to looking at ways to help with her spelling, she can relate to the examples of ‘anaesthetic’ and ‘catastrophe’, as they use visuals and real life examples. She thinks of some words that give her trouble and agrees that solutions like ‘betty eats cakes and uncle sells elephants’ (for because) or ‘never eat cake, eat salad sandwiches and stay young’ (for necessary) might work for those with Read/Write and Auditory/Oral preferences, but for her, picturing one cup and two sugars helps her to spell ‘necessary’, although she concedes that rhyming ‘hypo’ with ‘low’ does help her distinguish between ‘hyper’ and ‘hypo’. This indicates that despite some obvious preferences, we are all multi-modal, and will find a variety of solutions to help us.

 

Whenever students come across a problematic word they should write it down accurately in an A to Z notebook, with its dictionary definition, and then work out their best strategy to solve the problem. They should also think of, and write down a phrase which includes the word, so that they can remember the context if they haven’t used it for a while. Strategies will differ from word to word, and students who use this learning styles technique will become more confident in their abilities to solve their own problems without always relying on technology, or other people. Doing only two or three a week would increase the students’ wordpower by over a hundred in an academic year.

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They need to decide on, and then think of, their strategy before they write the word, not when they’ve got it wrong. Getting it right [or even nearly right] builds confidence in their problem-solving abilities.

 

Students often extend the use of such strategies to other aspects of their learning, especially revision. Helping students to discover their best learning styles can have a major effect on their success and self-esteem.

 

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References

 

Buzan T. (2000) Use Your Head London: BBC

Cottrell S. (2003) The Study Skills Handbook Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

 

Fleming N. (2001)  VARK- a guide to learning styles.

www.vark-learn.com/english/index.asp  (accessed 20th July 2003)

 

Fleming N. D. and Mills C. (1992) Not another inventory, rather a catalyst for reflection. To improve the academy (11) pp137-149

 

Gillingham A. and Stillman B.E. (1969) Remedial Training for Children with Specific Disability in Reading, Spelling and Penmanship Cambridge, MA: Educator’s Publishing Service

 

Knight S. (1995)  NLP at work: neuro-linguistic programming. London: Nicolas Brealey.

 

Mortimore T. (2003) Dyslexia and learning style: a practitioner’s handbook. London, Whurr

 

O’Connor J. and McDermott I. (1966) Principles of NLP. London: Thorson’s

 

Pask G. (1976b) Styles and strategies of learning British Journal of Educational Psychology 46:128-148

 

Pask G. and Scott B.C.E. (1979)  Learning Strategy, Teaching Style. Buckingham: Open University video.

 

Websites

www.active-learning-site.com (accessed 20th July 2003). This contains a lengthy piece on VARK, including the full inventory and details of how to administer and score it.

 

http://lsn.curtin.edu.au/tlf/tlf2001/gururajan.html  (accessed 20th July 2003). A critique of a number of learning styles, succinctly written for those engaged in training activities. This article is aimed at training for IT applications, but is equally relevant in our context.

 

© Copyright for this version of VARK is held by Neil D. Fleming, Christchurch, New Zealand and Charles C. Bonwell, Green Mountain, Colorado, USA.

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