Auditory learning is prevalent in our society but is difficult for some, especially children. If you’ve ever been in an elementary school classroom, you will remember how hard it is for the teacher’s words to reign in active kids!
When I was in high school, however, one of my classmates had very good auditory learning skills. She was in my zoology class and got 100% on almost every test – and there are a lot of terms and definitions to memorize in zoology. Our teacher said that it was because she was an auditory learner; she could simply listen to the lectures and remember all the information easily.
If you are an auditory learner, there are ways for you to make your life as easy as this zoology class was for this student. Take advantage of your skill!
- Make sure there are no other auditory distractions when you are listening to the information you want to remember (for example, in a lecture or meeting). It will be easier to focus if there are no other noises – others’ talking, outside noises, music, etc.. Learn to sit away from windows that might have street sounds coming from them. You have the skill of soaking up audio information, so don’t get it mixed up with other sounds.
Reading aloud will help you remember what you read
- Similarly, when studying or working, make sure you are in a quiet environment so you don’t get distracted. You might begin reading aloud or repeating aloud what you would like to remember. It might seem silly at first, but just repeating what someone else just said can help you remember.
- Speaking of speaking, getting sounds into your ears is the best way for you to learn. So come up with mnemonics, and even put things you want to remember to song. Most people have donethis to some degree, whether it be the alphabet song or their telephonenumber. It’s even easier to remember things when they have a rhythm or melody to go along with them.
Can I Improve My Auditory Learning?
If you are not an auditory learner, you can still get better at storing information you hear so that you remember it.
I found this to be true for myself when I started going to college. Once a week a guest lecturer would give a very dense and difficult lecture on a topic of their choice. It was usually a pre-written speech and often a dissertation that they would read aloud. It lasted a solid hour with no breaks and I became aware of how fatiguing it was to listen to such difficult material for so long. My mind wandered, my body ached in the chair, and it was hard to understand the speech. I would often space out and realize I had no idea what the lecturer was talking about anymore.
But as time went on and I continued going to these lectures, I began to have a longer attention span and was able to understand even difficult, long, and complex sentences read aloud in a monotone voice. My auditory learning was improving! Simply by exposing yourself to challenging audio material and persevering, you can improve yours too.
Pair the words you hear with whatever is your learning strength: for example, note-taking is a great way of remembering what you hear not only because of Tip One, but also because this covers three bases: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learning. Combining learning styles is a good way of taking advantage of your natural skill as well as improving other styles.
There is almost always a way of pairing what you want to remember with your strongest learning style. Be creative, consistent, and open to developing your weaker learning styles so that you can improve your memory as much as possible.