It’s safe to say that learning English can be pretty difficult. In fact, it’s been called one of the world’s most difficult languages, right up there with other challenging languages like Arabic, Japanese, Mandarin, and Finnish. This isn’t meant to scare you; just because something is difficult doesn’t mean it’s impossible— and besides, taking online business English classes is certainly important in 2021, given that it’s still the world’s most important language for business.
If you’re thinking about starting to take online business English classes with us, you need to give yourself the best possible chance of succeeding. The best way to do this might surprise you, and might even teach you something about yourself: it’s determining your learning style!
What is a “Learning Style?”
You don’t have to be an online English teacher to know something that all of us at Verbalize Now believe very strongly: every student is different. This means that everyone learns in different ways. What works for one student might do absolutely nothing for another.
Luckily, many of these differences were able to be determined through observation, research, and experience. After years of educational research, four primary learning styles were identified and incorporated into the VARK learning model, which was introduced in 1987.
Meet the Four Learning Styles
VARK stands for “Visual, Aural, Reading/Writing, and Kinesthetic” and refers to the four basic learning types. Chances are, you will either strongly relate to one of these or find yourself being a blend of several. For example, the author of this blog got a result of “Mild Read/Write,” with a strong showing in Reading and Writing. The author also scored highly in Kinesthetic, which was close behind. Humans are complex, so it’s not surprising if you attack different types of problems with different learning styles.
Here’s a quick rundown of the four learning styles:
- Visual learners respond well to charts, graphs, and visual presentations. Visual learners are the people who throw the assembly directions in the trash and watch a video on YouTube instead. They’ve got to see it done.
- Aural learners process and retain auditory information better than others. They never need to be told directions twice! If you were one of the students in school who didn’t need to take notes when listening to a lecture, this is probably you.
- Reading/Writing learners learn best when presented with information in the form of, you guess it, the written word. The reading/writing learner would dig the assembly instructions out of the trash can that the visual learner threw them in and start at page one.
- Kinesthetic learners are “hands-on” learners that crave taking a participatory role in their learning. These types of learners tend to have the hardest time in a traditional classroom, because so much of education has traditionally been based on the first three learning styles and less so on hands-on activities (however, this is slowly changing.)
We strongly recommend everyone take this free, five-minute VARK questionnaire and get the basic rundown of your learning style. If you’re interested in learning more about the specifics of your learning style, VARK charges $9.95 for a detailed academic or professional learning profile. (Just so we’re clear, we’re not affiliated with VARK, but we believe strongly in what they do.)
The difference between Verbalize Now and any other online business English school is very simple: we care about your success! All of our online business English classes are fully customized for you based on your unique learning style. If you’re ready to take your career to the next level, you’re going to need to speak English well— and there’s no company that cares about your success in that department more than Verbalize Now!
