Hi there! I am Teacher Alex from LBM, and today, I will be sharing tips for visual learners. If you find yourself wondering what type of learner you are, do take the time to watch my first video post where I explained the various learning styles and highlighted the benefits of identifying your own learning method by clicking this link before reading this article.
If you are more visually inclined, you are on the right page! Colours, diagrams, and charts are your best friends. This is because you have the ability to remember visual information more effectively compared to listening to explanations. You are also more likely to learn better by making annotations such as underlining, highlighting, or writing notes in different colours. Visual learning can significantly enhance your ability to process and retain information.
Let me share with you three ways how you can incorporate visual strategies and aids to make learning more effective for you:
1. Mind Maps
A mind map is a diagram that represents words, concepts, or ideas linked to and arranged around a central concept or theme. It usually uses a non-linear layout and can be visually appealing. By visually organising your thoughts and ideas, you can boost your creativity, understand complex concepts more easily, and improve memory recall. Mind mapping is also a flexible and enjoyable way to learn new information and can be used for anything from brainstorming sessions to project planning.
One way you can use mind maps in studying for English is the organisation of topics. You should already know that there are commonly tested topics for Oral and Composition—Environment, Celebrations, and Technology are some topics you may have come across. Mind maps incorporating different colours and pictures would help you organise information, phrases, and examples, all on one page. Below is an example of how a student has used a mind map to organise all the information they have gathered on the topic of solving global warming:
2. Highlighting
Although you may often hear your teachers repeating “highlight this”, have you ever wondered how it helps our brains to remember information? If you are a visual learner, using different colours to represent different types of information can help you recall information easily. For example, you can use different colours to represent feelings phrases, 5 senses descriptions, action chains, and speech tags respectively when studying for compositions.
Take a look at the following example. This is an article taken from a newspaper. Let’s say I am reading this for the first time, and in order to help me understand and process the information better, I have decided to highlight the details in different colours: blue for examples, red for phrases that I can use in my writing, and green for interesting details.
“I don’t know who keeps abandoning their cats here but as feeders, we have to take care of them and send the cats for sterilisation (to control the population). This is really not an easy job.”
Colour coding makes it easy for a visual learner to differentiate between the multiple ideas and information found within the text. It also makes the text visually stimulating, something that appeals to visual learners. Visual learning through highlighting can help you categorise the different information according to the colours assigned to it, making it easier for you to remember and recall what you are studying.
3. Symbols
When reading a chunk of text such as a passage, using different symbols can aid us in close reading. For example, squiggly lines can be used to mark out clues for comprehension questions, while boxing up words can be used for referencing questions. Putting a star beside a sentence can represent significant information in the story. By making use of different symbols, we can better understand a text, as compared to a clean, unannotated passage.
Here is an example of how I would try to make sense of a piece of text:
Source: Life of Pi by Yann Martel
In the example of an annotated text above, I have used symbols like arrows and question marks, and underlined important details in the passage in order to help me comprehend it better. The arrows show how one detail is linked to another: problem-solution, cause-effect, etc. For example, since Richard Parker was facing the problem of struggling to stay afloat in the water, the solution was for him to swim towards and try to get into the lifeboat where the writer was. The question marks indicate the questions I had while trying to make sense of what was happening in the story. Just like colour coding, the symbols that you use are personal to you, and it is fine if they only make sense to you! However, when you first start making annotations, you may want to have a key or legend that indicates what each symbol represents so that you are clear on what you are marking out on the text.
Applying these different techniques all at once may be daunting, so a good way you can start to cater to the way you learn based on your learning styles would be to try out each technique in different study sessions and see which one works best for you. Don’t be afraid to experiment because the ultimate aim is to find something that helps to not only optimise your study efforts so that you become exam-ready but also make learning an enjoyable process. Remember, visual learning is not just effective but also engaging. Good luck!