Section A
Part 1 – Who am I as a learner?
1.1 What is learning?
Nowadays, people believe that learning can enhance their status or values (Beagrie 2007). They trust that learning is a part of their lives (Beagrie 2007). Learning is related to the process of knowing and understanding information (Bransford, Sherwood, Hasselbring, Kinzer and Williams 1990). Student can create and evolve the knowledge structures by learning (Bransford, Sherwood, Hasselbring, Kinzer and Williams 1990).
Learning style can allow learners to choose the right skills on learning (Gagne 1984). In order to learn more easily and efficiently, people should understand their learning style (Gagne 1984). The learning style is an individual’s personality characteristics and the favorite ways of collecting, organizing and analyzing about the data (Fleming 2001). That means that the individual learning style may consistent with the personality trait (Fleming 2001).
Moreover, learning is a collaborative process (Grabinger and Dunlap 1995). Nowadays, student learns not alone from teacher and professional, but also from each other (Grabinger and Dunlap 1995). Therefore, they can help each other build explicit and refined knowledge (Grabinger and Dunlap 1995). Students can learn better in a collective learning process if they know their team roles (Edmondson, Bohmer and Pisano 2001).
Therefore, I have done three psychometric tests. The three psychometric tests included VARK, MBTI and Belbin. VARK can let me know my learning style (William and Richard 2004); MBTI can let me know my personality (Shu and Yang 2009); Belbin can let me know my team role (Woods 1992).
2. Learning Style
Learning Styles refers to the difference of learning method between individual (William and Richard 2004). The characteristics of learning style are cognitive, affective, and psychological behaviors that show the learner’s perception, interaction and respond in the learning environment (NASSP 1979). VARK is the famous tool for learning style assessment (Drago and Wagner 2004). Therefore, I had done the VARK questionnaire in order to analyze my learning style. (you may like to reorganize this paragraph so that those related to learning style can be moved back to 1.1 while move those related to VARK to 1.2.1 to make your writing more concise and clear.)
1.2.1 VARK
The VARK questionnaire was developed at Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand, in 1995 (Apalska and Brozik). There are four main physiological learning styles (William and Richard 2004): 1) The visual learners: learn by demonstrations and descriptions. They like to use lists to keep pace and organize their thoughts. They are easily distracted by action. 2) The aural learners: learn by listening. They like to be provided with aural instructions. They enjoy dialogues and prefer to work out problems by talking. They are easily distracted by noise. 3) The read/write learners: learn by taking notes during the lessons. They often draw things to remember them. They do well with hands-on tasks. 4) The kinesthetic learners: learn by doing. They like to make use of touching, moving and interacting with their environment. They prefer not to see or listen and generally do not do well in the classroom.
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