Skeptical of Styles: Opinion on learning styles and the accuracy of the tests that determine them

I don’t think I’ve ever broken a B on a chemistry test. I study hard, complete all my assignments, do the practice test, read over all my notes and to top it all off, I meet with a tutor every Sunday. 

I’ve never been one to complain about a B, but with all the time and effort I’ve been putting in, is a measly 2% more an inconceivable request?

While preparing for my unit nine exam, I began to wonder: is it the way I’m studying that’s the problem here?

We’ve all heard of the three most common types of learners — auditory, visual and tactile. 

Usually, when preparing for an exam, I combine all three learning styles in using the review materials. For tactile, I complete practice problems, reading over notes fits the visual category and having a friend or tutor summarize the concept to me is auditory. 

This time, however, I decided to focus my studies in one specific learning style with the hope of achieving that A I’ve so longed for. 

I took two learning style tests. First, the Education Planner test which said that my most dominant style was tactile. And secondly I took the Chegg Play learning types quiz which said that I’m an auditory learner — basically the opposite of what the first test determined. 

This had me skeptical from the get-go because these were the two top search results, but had essentially opposite questions and results. 

Education Planner asked more real-life scenario questions — “You’re out shopping for clothes, and you’re waiting in line to pay, what are you most likely to do while you are waiting?” 

Meanwhile, the Chegg Play questions were more directly related to school situations — “Do you prefer listening to class lectures over the assigned readings?” 

I decided to base my studying off of the Education Planner results, tactile, because it was the top search result and seemed to be the most legitimate since it had the word “education” and a “.org” instead of “.com” in the website name.  

I focused my test prep on the review problems and practice test and less on re-reading notes and having people regurgitate the information to me in an effort to solidify it in my brain. 

Working and reworking practice problems was the best way to prepare for this specific test as the objective was to show that I could balance the equation and plug the given polyatomic ions into formulas.

Because of the format of the exam, the best way to prepare was the tactical style — it would’ve been a waste of time to split up my studying between the three different styles. 

At 9:15 a.m. this past Thursday, I walked into Mr. Appier’s chemistry class feeling exceptionally prepared, faltering on only one or two of the 20-something multiple choice questions and only one of the formulas on the written portion. Grades aren’t in for the test yet, but I’m pretty confident that I got that A, or at the very least a high B. 

However, I don’t think I’ll be approaching every test with this tactical style. It’ll will work for math and science when every problem is solved with a formula and the only thing that changes are the numbers or compounds. 

When it comes to English and history, where the objective of the test is to show all I know on one overall topic, the auditory learning style with in-class lectures and group discussions is how I tend to learn best. 

Ultimately, what I’ve found is that the learning style is more centered around the school subject, not the student.