Learning Styles & Myths
A popular notion claims that learners must be taught via their “preferred modality,” such as visual, auditory, or kinesthetic.
What is the Learning Styles Myth?
This technique involves teaching new words directly, including their meaning, form, and usage.
What is explicit (or direct) vocabulary instruction?
Despite its recognized benefits, claiming this approach alone will magically build an extensive lexicon is considered a major misconception.
What is extensive reading?
Myth: “Memorizing a word list once means the vocabulary is learned.” Reality: Students actually need multiple exposures and practice over time, also known as this.
What is repeated or spaced practice?
In debunking learning styles, teachers are encouraged to provide diverse, context-rich tasks that draw on these multiple channels of input.
What are visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and other multisensory methods?
Research shows that strictly matching tasks to a single style has little impact on learning outcomes because it ignores the benefit of varied input.
Why is there no strong evidence supporting learning styles?
Nation (2022) emphasizes that explicit learning should be complemented with this type of learning, which often occurs through exposure.
What is incidental learning?
The reason extensive reading may not cover all necessary aspects of lexical knowledge, such as collocations or specialized terms.
What is its focus on general comprehension over deeper lexical mastery?
Myth: “Students can learn everything implicitly if they read enough.” Reality: This structured approach is crucial to fill specific vocabulary gaps.
What is explicit or direct vocabulary teaching?
This repeated engagement with new words across reading, writing, listening, and speaking tasks strengthens lexical retention.
What is integrated skills practice?
Despite being widely challenged by empirical evidence, this explains why teachers and students still cling to the idea of learning styles.
What is the intuitive appeal or familiarity of the concept?
Studies show that learners benefit when this repetition strategy spaces out reviews over time to strengthen memory consolidation.
What is spaced repetition?
According to Nation (2022), extensive reading needs to be paired with these deliberate strategies for truly robust vocabulary growth.
What are explicit instruction methods (e.g., direct teaching, focused practice)?
Myth: “I’m a ‘visual’ learner; I can’t learn words unless I see pictures.” Reality: Research suggests combining multiple modes of input, known as this.
What is a multimodal or multisensory approach?
One strategy to balance the myth of “reading solves everything” is to pre-teach key vocabulary before reading to aid comprehension.
What is explicit instruction or frontloading vocabulary?
Believing too strongly in “learning styles” can discourage these integrated, multidimensional teaching methods that aid vocabulary acquisition.
What are multimodal or varied instructional approaches?
In vocabulary teaching, it refers to reintroducing a word in multiple contexts (written, spoken, listening tasks) to deepen retention.
What is recycling vocabulary?
One major advantage of extensive reading is repeated encounters with high-frequency words, which fosters this dimension of word recognition.
What is automaticity (or fluency) in recognizing common words?
Myth: “All words must be learned equally.” Reality: Frequency-based word selection aims to prioritize these.
What are high-frequency or core vocabulary items?
Aligning with Nation’s (2022) recommendations, teachers should supplement incidental learning with these planned, methodical learning opportunities.
What are deliberate or intentional vocabulary learning activities?
This harmful outcome can happen if teachers pigeonhole students into “style” categories and ignore other effective instructional strategies.
What is limiting students’ exposure to robust, varied forms of practice?
While often overlooked, this dimension of vocabulary knowledge—beyond basic meaning—helps students learn how words combine in natural use.
What are collocations or collocational knowledge?
A potential limitation of relying solely on extensive reading is neglecting active production skills in these language domains.
What are speaking and writing?
Myth: “Flashcards alone are enough to achieve lexical depth.” Reality: Learners need this to fully master nuance and usage.
What is contextualized practice (or encountering words in meaningful contexts)?
By busting common myths, instructors encourage students to self-monitor their own lexical progress—an approach often referred to as this.
What is metacognitive awareness or self-regulated learning?