When it comes to tutoring, there are 3 main learning styles you will have to encounter. Each student learns differently, and a well-rounded educator will be able to adapt to each student’s needs. We’ll provide some overall tips on how to best help the students who fit into each of the three learning styles.

The three learning styles are: visual, auditory and kinesthetic. These are learning by viewing, listening and by doing respectively. We have listed out below the ways a tutor can tailor their lessons to their tutees, based on each of these learning styles.

Visual students should be able to see what they are learning and engage with it that way. A tutor can incorporate presentations, video-calls or learning videos, as well as mind maps, word maps. Asking students to view lists and brainstorming activities are also ways to stimulate their minds to the task of visually processing information and effectively learning.

Auditory learners should be dealt with mainly clear communication and lecture style speeches. These are the students who can process information and comprehend it effectively from the explanation of a concept or action. The key for educators when they are teaching auditory learners is to ensure your communication is as precise as possible. This can include mnemonics, acronyms and rhythmic sentences. As well as this, you can use musical activities such as playing music or presenting learning material to music as ways to gain the full attention of an auditory learner.

Kinesthetics learners learn most by attempting a task by their own hands and being asked to ‘do it’. This can easily be done when you are tutoring in a face-to-face situation, by asking students to complete activities that you set up for them, but can also be replicated by an online scenario with the act of asking students to share their screens and figure out how to work out the system, theory or process that you are asking them to work with. This allows the kinesthetic learner to engage fully with the material at hand — these students tend to be happy with navigating through slides of a presentation or data in a spreadsheet.

Most of your tutees will tend to be a mix of all three of the learning styles, so feel free to mix and match your materials to meet the needs of many. Should you wish to tailor the material more to be suited to one individual tutee, then you can easily edit this. The more you have to work with, the better it is generally!

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