6 Study Tips for Visual Learners

6 Study Tips for Visual Learners Visual Learning is one of the  three different learning styles  made famous by Neil D. Fleming in his VAK model of learning. He states that people who are visual learners need to  see  new information in order to truly learn it, hence the need for study tips for visual learners. Visual Learner Tips People who have this trait are often very spatially aware and respond to things like color, tone, brightness, contrast, and other visual info when they read, study, and learn. Some also have photographic memories in various degrees and can not only visualize information after reading it or seeing it but can recreate it. Most people utilize this learning method at least partly throughout their lives, especially since traditional school is geared toward those visual learners, but some people would classify themselves as predominantly visual learners where others would not.  If youre one of them,  you may find these things helpful when studying for a test, quiz, midterm, or final exam. Since sight is key, visual learners need materials in front of them to help get  the information fully committed to memory. Capitalize on this learning style with simple tips. Color Code Assign colors to common themes in your notes, textbook, and handouts. For instance, if youre studying vocabulary words for a test, highlight all of the nouns in yellow, all of the verbs in blue and all of the adjectives in pink. Youll associate that particular color with the part of speech, which will help you remember it on the test.   In a history textbook, highlight all the major actions of a particular general, for instance, in one color and all the consequences of his actions in another. When researching for an essay, color code the info you find by topic.   Your brain remembers color really well, so use it to your advantage! Organize Your Notes Because youre so visual, disorganized notes will be largely unsettling to you. Put all of your handouts in one place in your notebook or binder. Design clear, neat tabs or another type of system to keep things straight. Rewrite your notes. Use outlines to keep things succinct and clear. Not only will you be looking at the ideas from the lecture again, which capitalizes on your visual learning, but you can also add new information or edit as you move along. This will help you learn the material. Study the Graphics This is a fabulous study tip for those of you who can absorb new information with your eyes. Use the charts and graphics in your textbook for your chapter test  to your advantage. It is much easier to learn the periodic table of the elements on the chart than it is to learn a list of the elements. Bonus? Charts that are color-coded! Draw Pictures or Figures Even if you are not the most creative person, get out your pencil and draw pictures, figures, and diagrams to accompany the information you are trying to learn. The phrase, A picture is worth a thousand words definitely applies to you. Your brain will store a set of drawings of the five biggest cities in Canada in your head much longer than it will a list of those cities. Help yourself out when the textbook doesnt and create your own visuals. Watch Documentaries or Videos Dont be afraid to step outside of your classroom in order to glean knowledge about whatever it is you are studying as long as you use a reliable source and not some hack on YouTube. Getting a well-rounded, big picture of your topic can really expand your knowledge! And when you are this type of learner, it helps to secure that knowledge through media like documentaries or videos rather than just through textbooks.   Draw Concept Maps A concept map is a method of visually brainstorming, where you get all of the ideas from your head onto paper and draw connections where you see fit. Youll start with a central idea - weather, for example. That will go in the center of your sheet of paper. Then, from the weather, youll branch off into main categories. Add things like precipitation, climate, air, clouds, and so on. From each of those categories, youll branch off further. Clouds could be divided further down into cumulus, stratus, cirrus, and so on. Precipitation could be divided down into rain, sleet, snow, etc. If you look at the topic you are learning from this angle, its easy to spot gaps in your knowledge base. If, for instance, youre studying weather and you realize you have no idea how climate can affect weather or what to put under that category, perhaps you missed something in class.

The Traditional Modes of Discourse in Composition

The Traditional Modes of Discourse in Composition In composition studies, the term modes of discourse refers to the four traditional categories of written texts: narration, description, exposition, and argument. Also known as the  rhetorical modes and forms of discourse. In 1975, James Britton and his associates at the University of London questioned the usefulness of the modes of discourse as a way of teaching students how to write. The tradition is profoundly prescriptive, they observed, and shows little inclination to observe the writing process: its concern is with how people should write rather than how they do (The Development of Writing Abilities [11-18]). Also see: Current-Traditional RhetoricDiscourseExpository WritingModels of CompositionTheme Writing Examples and Observations Beginning with Samuel Newmans Practical Systems of Rhetoric of 1827, American rhetoric textbooks . . . were supplementing Whatelian argumentative rhetoric with other modes. Teachers were coming to prefer books that offered concrete treatment of the different sorts of communication aims obviously served by writing. As writing displaced oral rhetoric, the older insistence on a single argumentative purpose did not serve, and in 1866 the desire for a multimodal rhetorical system was met by Alexander Bain, whose English Composition and Rhetoric proposed the multimodal system that has remained to this day, the forms or modes of discourse: narration, description, exposition, and argument.(Robert Connors, Composition-Rhetoric. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997)Writing in Multiple Modes- A mode is . . . considered as one dimension of a subject, a way of viewing the subject as static or dynamic, abstract or concrete. A typical discourse, then, may make use of all the modes. For instance, to write about a monarch butterfly we may narrate about the butterfly (e.g., trace its migration north in the spring or its life cycle), describe the butterfly (orange and black, about three inches wide), classify it (species, Danaus Plexippus, belonging to the family Danaidae, the milkweed butterflies, order Lepidoptera); and evaluate it (one of the most beautiful and best known of butterflies). However, even though the discourse may include all of the modes, it is common to use one of the modes to organize the discourse, as is suggested by the title of one of [James L.] Kinneavys textbooks: Writing: Basic Modes of Organization, by Kinneavy, Cope, and Campbell.(Mary Lynch Kennedy, ed. Theorizing Composition: A Critical Sourcebook of Theory And Scholarship in Contemporary Composition Studies. IAP, 1998)|- No theory of modes of discourse ever pretends that the modes do not overlap. In actuality, it is impossible to have pure narration, etc. However in a given discourse there will often be . . . [a] dominant mode. . . .These four  modes of discourse [narration, classification, description, and evaluation]  are  not an application of the communication triangle. They actually are grounded in certain philosophic concepts of the nature of reality considered as being or becoming.(James Kinneavy, A Theory of Discourse. Prentice Hall, 1972) Problems With the Modes of DiscourseThe modes are faulted for relying on faculty and associationist psychology. Faculty psychology assumes the mind is governed by the faculties of understanding, imagination, passion, or will. Associationist psychology contends that we know the world through the grouping, or association, of ideas, which follows basic laws and order. Thus early proponents of the modes of discourse assumed that one should choose a form of discourse according to the faculty to be influenced and based on laws of association. . . .In light of current composition theory, problems with the modes of discourse as a guiding principle of composition pedagogy are numerous. For example, Sharon Crowley (1984) faults the modes for focusing only on text and writer, ignoring the audience, and thus being arhetorical.(Kimberly Harrison, Contemporary Composition Studies. Greenwood, 1999)Adams Sherman Hill on the Kinds of Composition (1895)The four kinds of composition that seem to requir e separate treatment are: Description, which deals with persons or things; Narration, which deals with acts or events; Exposition, which deals with whatever admits of analysis or requires explanation; Argument, which deals with any material that may be used to convince the understanding or to affect the will. The purpose of description is to bring before the mind of the reader persons or things as they appear to the writer. The purpose of narration is to tell a story. The purpose of exposition is to make the matter in hand more definite. The purpose of argument is to influence opinion or action, or both.In theory these kinds of composition are distinct, but in practice two or more of them are usually combined. Description readily runs into narration, and narration into description: a paragraph may be descriptive in form and narrative in purpose, or narrative in form and descriptive in purpose. Exposition has much in common with one kind of description; and it may be of service to an y kind of description, to narration, or to argument.(Adams Sherman Hill, The Principles of Rhetoric, rev. edition. American Book Company, 1895)