What’s Your Learning Style?

What’s Your Adult Learning Style?

As motorcyclists, as well as in all other areas of our lives we constantly have opportunities to learn – we all ought to make the most of these. If you don’t try to improve – in speaking a foreign language, in your dance moves or in the weight you can bench press at the gym you’ll standstill, or more likely you’ll drop back. Anyone who gets back on their bike after a lengthy period off it will know the truth of this.

But what are adult learning styles and do they really exist?

In its simplest and most straightforward version there are four basic styles and the theory is that we all tend towards a particular style or combination of styles:

Visual – people who lean towards this style favour pictures, diagrams and charts. You need to use this style to recognise and interpret road signs, which are, after all symbols and diagrams. It will normally sit alongside other explanations and help you to understand issues such as road positioning, braking distances and hazard awareness. When you do any maintenance on your bike, you’ll be using visual learning to relate pictures and diagrams in your manual to the physical machine you’re working on.

Auditory – if you’re an auditory learner you like to have an issue talked through or discussed in a group or in conversation with an Observer or other expert rider. If you have doubts and queries, saying them out load in front of others can be more helpful in clarifying an issue than just thinking it inside your own head. It’s always good to hear other people’s experiences. Don’t rely on this alone as while it’s good to hear a range of opinions, too many can be confusing, especially if you go on YouTube!

Reading and writing – Do you take notes every time your Observer gives you feedback? Is there a copy of Roadcraft on your   bedside table? If so you’re a ‘intrapersonal learner’ – you like to see things in writing and be able to go over them by yourself as often as you need to. This may be your natural style or you may have to force yourself. For some people the idea of ‘studying’ can be too reminiscent of

Kinetic – You like to learn by doing and need to be hands on. Clearly this is essential to motorcycling as you will never learn unless you actually do it. Also, the most fun. When working towards the Advanced Test or further qualification it’s essential to put in the miles to reinforce the learning from observed rides.

We need to use all four styles if we’re to get half-decent at any skill. If you’ve been riding for a while then most likely you’re using a kinetic learning approach – however, as many experienced riders have learned on taking an advanced skills course with LAM or elsewhere, learning by doing alone, without an understanding of principles and theory for all but the most naturally gifted will result in bad habits becoming ingrained.

We all need to be able to talk through the issues and problems we come across in our riding as well as to make use of reliable expert guidance in written or visual forms.

Now I’m just off to re-read Roadcraft.