Saturday, August 27, 2011

Haptic preferences of 5-12th graders (and adult learning style plasticity in pronunciation teaching)

Clip art: Clker
This summary study found that "average" 5-12th graders in the US, Hong Kong and Japan had a relatively balanced learning style profile, with a slight preference for haptic (37%), with auditory at 34% and visual at only 27%. Those results appear to contrast substantially with the "typical" adult learner who tends to be biased in favor of visual with auditory second and haptic a distant third. From that perspective, our goal should be to assist adult learners in developing a more balanced, multiple-modality-based learning style profile more like they had in school. Not sure about the applicability of the research but I certainly like the results. On the face of it, however, that looks like an almost ideal mindset for pronunciation change, a good target for our research and instruction.

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