Presenting new language both orally and visually (board, pictures, written form) improves retention over a single channel. This is the defensible core of what ‘learning styles’ gets wrong: use multiple modes for everyone.
Theory (Claude)
- Paivio’s dual coding: verbal and imagery codes give two retrieval routes.
- Mayer’s multimedia principle: words + pictures beat words alone, but the redundancy principle warns against reading the same text aloud that is on screen (narration + identical text can overload).
Classroom moves
- New word: say it, show it (image), write it, then use it in a sentence.
- Grammar: timeline or diagram alongside the spoken explanation.
- Don’t read slides aloud word for word.
Connections
Learning styles are preferences, not a basis for matching · Film lessons in five stages - from expectation to expression · Spaced retrieval is the best-supported technique