6 Different Tutoring Styles
Everyone learns differently. While it’s not possible to adapt to every student’s learning style in a classroom, you can easily do it when offering one-to-one tuitions such as spark tutoring or teaching your child at home.
If your student is struggling with a specific subject, there are two possibilities. One, your student has a learning disorder, which is best addressed by a team of psychiatrists and psychologists. And two, your tutoring style doesn’t suit your student well.
So in this article, we’ll take a look at 6 different tutoring styles that you can experiment with during your lessons. We hope you’ll be able to find a style that turns your student into a brilliant learner!
1. Visual Learning
You must’ve heard people calling themselves “visual learners”, and you may very well be one yourself. Around 40% of college students are visual learners.
Visual learners struggle with text-heavy resources of information such as bland textbooks. And it’s probably because they find it hard to create a mental picture of what’s being said in the text.
To determine whether your student is a visual learner, you can ask them simple questions like whether they prefer movies or books. If they are a visual learner, they’ll choose movies. If you would like a more in-depth assessment of your student’s learning style, check out this questionnaire.
If your student is a visual learner, you can try teaching them a concept that they are struggling with by using images, animations, and videos to see if they respond better. You may also find that creating a collage combining these elements offers a richer, more comprehensive view of the topic. For example, if you’re trying to teach a child about photosynthesis, a diagram would be a helpful resource to use as an aid. Another example is videos that are perfect for teaching science and math concepts. Tutors can use explainer videos to supplement their lessons and help students understand complex concepts. A well-made explainer video for education is a valuable tool for tutors who want to provide their students with an engaging and practical learning experience.
Alternatively, if you’re teaching a visual learner online, you can try using lots of colors in your presentation to help categorise the content. For example, if you’re teaching your student about the different types of verbs in English grammar, you can group them by colour to help them break down the concepts.
Visual learning strategies are often implemented in the treatment and educational support for individuals with learning difficulties as well. For instance, this method could be effective for children with dyslexia. While dyslexia primarily affects reading and related language-based processing skills, many individuals with dyslexia may have strengths in visual and spatial reasoning. Forbrain’s guide on dyslexia in children gives detailed information about the signs, symptoms, and other details of this learning disability. Identifying learning difficulties that the child might have will give them a chance to understand what kind of teaching methods will work best.
2. Auditory Learning
If a student likes being read to, they may be an auditory learner.
Auditory learners need to hear words to make the best sense of them, which is why they struggle with non-auditory tasks like reading and writing.
They are also avid music listeners, tend to read to themselves out loud, and ask a lot of questions to verbalize their concepts.
Auditory learners are also easily distracted by noise because it instantly catches their attention, so you want to minimize noise while teaching one.
Finally, it’s a good idea to record your lectures and offer them to auditory learners (which is easy to do when teaching online). There is some evidence that they can improve their grade by listening to recorded lectures multiple times.
3. Physical Learning
Physical learners are also known as kinesthetic learners. They are almost as common as visual learners, and these students learn the best via a hands-on approach.
You can identify a physical learner by restless demeanour, excellent body control, good spatial awareness, and good hand-eye coordination.
These students often excel in athletics, gymnastics, dancing, and other physical activities. So if you know your student is involved in these activities at school, you should try adopting a more hands-on approach to teaching.
After you teach a concept to a physical learner, try to have them apply it to some kind of real-life situation to solidify their understanding. For example, you can have them perform a science experiment after teaching them the theory behind it.
It’s also a good idea to allow these students plenty of time and room to move because they’re often restless and need to engage in physical activity to focus better.
However, it’s important to determine the difference between a physical learner and a student that may have a learning deficit disorder, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which is a psychiatric condition that involves an inability to focus and sit still.
Students with ADHD or other learning difficulties may require you to refer them to more specialist tutors that help support their cognitive development. Luckily, there are many online platforms that offer special needs tutoring such as Cluey Learning.
4. Social Learning
Humans have a strong tendency to imitate each other, and some children seem to learn better in situations where there is plenty of human interaction. This is what is known as social learning, otherwise known as interpersonal learning.
You can think of these students as “extroverts” — they want interaction even while studying.
If a student demonstrates good communication, problem-solving, and leadership skills, they might be a social learner. And it can be difficult to create a social environment when tutoring children one-to-one. But these students also like to receive plenty of feedback from their teachers, which is something you could provide them.
If you’re tutoring a group of students, role-playing and group activities might help the social learners in the group. For other useful strategies to apply with your student, check out this resource for interpersonal learning.
5. Solitary Learning
Solitary learning is the opposite of social learning. Solitary learners can be thought of as the “introverts” of the educational world — they prefer to learn alone.
These types of learners don’t adjust well to online learning environments, which are often collaborative in nature. And it’s very likely that a student is seeking one-to-one tuition with you because they’re unable to learn well in online classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
While solitary learners don’t mind the discussions that happen in collaborative settings, they do mind collaborating to achieve course-specific tasks.
These students are highly self-motivated to achieve tasks on their own, so it’s important to provide them plenty of opportunities to do that.
Even in a group setting, you can cater to solitary learners by highlighting and appreciating their individual achievements, which is what they care the most about.
Other traits that can help you identify a solitary learner include enjoying a quiet environment, daydreaming (or phasing out), showing excellent imagination (for e.g. via story writing), and keeping a diary.
Interestingly, you can also have solitary teachers in addition to solitary learners. Solitary teachers have been defined as those teachers who function outside a school or organization and don’t like to interact with other professionals in the field.
6. Logical Learning
Logical learners respond best to activities that require problem-solving and inference. They are good at detecting patterns and trends in what they learn and find it easy to draw conclusions based on facts.
Logical learners are also pretty good at mathematics. In fact, the other name for logical learning is mathematical learning. They can perform seemingly complex calculations easily and if you’re teaching maths to a logical learner, your job is going to be very easy!
