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Question: How can TEFL teachers successfully engage students in learning? Title: Using Various Learning Styles in the TEFL Classroom Learning a new language is hard work! Teaching a new language can be hard work as well! It becomes particularly challenging when one realizes that each person is different and has preferred methods for learning. A good TEFL teacher makes it their responsibility to present engaging lessons that interest their students and appeal to the various ways in which they learn. The preferred manner in which a person learns is called their “learning style”. There is dispute about exactly how many learning styles there are, but for the purpose of this assignment, we will address the three main styles: Visual Learning Style: students with this learning style prefer to learn by seeing information. They respond best to pictures, maps, images, graphs, diagrams and symbols. Auditory Learning Style: these students learn best by listening and speaking. They understand and retain information presented in lectures, discussions, role-play dialogues, songs and rhymes. Kinesthetic Learning Style: Kinesthetic students love to learn by touching and doing. Activities that help them learn usually involve physical games, drama, dance, hand or body actions, charades etc. Intentionally including a variety of these learning style activities in TEFL lesson plans should result in major improvements in student attentiveness, increased comprehension and greater retention of language learnt. This will result in a more positive classroom experience for both student and teacher. Some students fit clearly into a particular learning style, others overlap into two or more categories. Inviting students to take a questionnaire to determine which learning style is predominant for them, and allowing them to choose between various classroom activities may be very helpful. Activities that engage the different learning styles of the students can be used in the engage, study or activate stage of the lesson. Teachers should plan for varying activities in each lesson using songs, pictures, poems, different fonts or colors, flashcards, role-play, audio-tapes or CDs, models (human and non-human), clapping out syllables etc. and other creative ideas to keep their lessons fresh and fun. This concept can also be used when developing assessment tools. Teachers should “think outside the box” of standard tests or assignments and create evaluation tasks which reflect different learning styles. There is some controversy surrounding the concept of learning styles. Some argue that these categories are too broad and that people, unique as they are, should not be assigned to restrictive groups. Others see the learning skills not reflective of individual people, but rather indicative of the way certain cultures or educational institutions train students to learn. Regardless of these concerns, it’s incontrovertible that including a balance of styles in each lesson will increase student learning. Teachers should not only consider which learning styles are best suited for their students, but also for the content to be presented, as well as the stage of the lesson (engage, study, activate etc.). Some topics lend themselves more naturally to certain teaching methodologies and this should be taken into account when planning lessons. TEFL teachers who carefully consider how to help each student achieve their full potential by utilizing activities from various learning styles, make the task of learning a new language that little bit easier!
