Spatial learners are from Mars and visual learners are from Venus.

We were midway through our long winter's drive. I was reading a book aloud to Mark, who was driving. (A terrible book. We got our money's worth mocking it. I'll review it later for you.) The kids were bored but quiet, listening to music or leafing through books. The eight-year-old was scribbling on a sketchpad; he is my cartoonist. "Mom?" he asked. "How do you spell 'Indiana?'"

"I-N-D-I--" I started.

But he interrupted me, talking over my spelling, to repeat as he wrote it down, "I...N..."

"Hold on, slow down," I said. I began to invoke a spelling-learning technique I learned from somewhere. "Okay, don't interrupt me. Listen to the whole word and picture it in your mind as I say it, then write the whole word down. I-N-D-I-A-N-A."

Mark interrupted me in a baffled tone of voice. "How do you expect him to do that?" he asked me.

I was equally baffled. "What do you mean, how do I expect him to do that? I just want him to remember the letters as a whole word and then write the whole word down."

He insisted, "But what do you mean, 'picture the word in his mind?' How is that supposed to work? You can't see a word. It isn't a thing, like a screwdriver. It's just an abstraction. It can't be pictured, like it was a screwdriver or something."

Now I was really confused. It really hadn't seemed like that tough of a concept. "Um... I want him to imagine that he can see the word. Imagine a picture of it, with all the letters in order."

"All the letters? At the same time?"

"Yes... can't you?"

"No!"

I was amazed. He really couldn't imagine being able to picture a word in his mind? I couldn't imagine NOT being able to picture it. "Well... I can. It's like, um, like, in my mind's eye I can see it on a page, as if it were typed on a page."

"Typed? Not handwritten?"

"Well... I can imagine it handwritten if I want to" (here I paused to imagine the word "Indiana" in my own handwriting on a page, just to check) "but I guess the default picture is typed."

"What typeface?" he pressed.

"Uh, more like Courier than anything else. I mean, I can do Times New Roman or Helvetica if you want me to. Really it looks like an old typewriter."

He shook his head as if he didn't believe me.

"Listen, Mark, can you imagine a process and instrumentation diagram?"

"Sure."

"How about a plate-and-frame heat exchanger? Can you imagine opening it up and seeing all the parts, or maybe an exploded diagram of one showing how it all fits together?"

"Of course."

"Imagine going into our kitchen and picking up the rotary cheese grater and taking it apart?"

"Yes..."

"Okay. You walk into a room. There's a desk with a typewriter on it. You walk over to the typewriter. Pull the sheet of paper out. On the paper is typed a single word: 'Indiana.' Can you read the word?"

"No. Too many letters."

"What if the word was 'cat'? Can you read that?"

Pause. "Yes, I think I can do that one."

"But not, umm... Give me a word that's hard to spell...."

"'Necessary,'" he suggested.

"Okay, that's a good one, I always have to think about it too. Okay, 'necessary.' You can't imagine the word 'necessary' in your mind as a picture?"

"No."

"Well, what do you see when you try?" I asked, fascinated.

He paused for a while. "I can see the N and the E at the beginning, and the Y at the end, and in the middle just a jumble."

I stared at him. "How is it that you can spell anything at all?"

"Well, I just start at the beginning and take it a few letters at a time until I get to the end."

"You can't compare the word you've written with a picture of the word in your mind."

"No, I already told you that." He was getting exasperated with me. But his tone changed to curiosity: "I can imagine a pencil. I can turn it around, look at it from the end, rotate it all different directions, mentally break it in half and see the inside. Can you do that with the word 'necessary?'"

I had not considered that. I tried it. I pictured the word 'necessary' typed on a clean white page. Imagined the page rotating counterclockwise, the y-end of the word ramping up above the n-end slowly, up to the vertical. "I can still see it, all the letters in order, all the way up to ninety degrees. But if I rotate it farther it kind of collapses into a jumble. Wow, that was a good question! I never tried that before."

"Can you flip it around and see it written from the back? Like through a sign painted on a glass window?"

"Or like those animations of words they used to have on the old Electric Company shows," I said, remembering. "Let me see. Um, I can't do it with 'necessary.' I can do it with 'cat.'"

He shook his head. "I think maybe your spelling technique won't work with everyone."

"Well, how am I supposed to tell the child how to spell a word then?"

"Do it slowly enough that he can write it down as you say each letter."

But that will take forever! I thought, but didn't say. "It's just for a few seconds, just long enough to take it in and then write it down -- like remembering a phone number just long enough to hang up and then dial it. Can't you do that? 'Indiana' isn't any longer than a phone number."

"I generally write it down."

Married thirteen years, and it seems we still don't understand each other. Well, I will try to be more sensitive from now on.

Comments

[Cathie]

So, knowing you both (but you better), I'm not at all surprised by that exchange!!!

It's not a gender thing, either. You are so clearly a visual learner (hence your Spelling Bee championship).

I think that IS the beauty of homeschooling, isn't it? Figuring out your kids (and then your spouses) learning modalities and right-brained/left-brained tendencies? I love that.

Thanks for sharing that!

Kevin and I have similar conversations. He is an auditory, left-brained learner and I'm a right-brained, tactile-kinesthetic learner. Makes for very interesting conversations. I seriously can't see where he comes from on some things until he does just what Mark did for you...

Too funny, very interesting. Thanks for sharing!

[Patty]

I can see words in my head like Erin, and spin them like your hubby can spin objects. I guess that makes me a freak, right? ;-) I used to think Erin and I think the same way, but it appears there is at least one difference.

[MelanieB]

Wow I totally can't picture a word like necessary in my head. I am so not a visual learner. But I can definitely turn a pencil around and see it from every side and break it in two to see the inside.

It's always fascinating to get a peek into how the world looks to other people. Thanks for sharing this.

I'm guessing you're not a whiz a tetris then?

[Amy F]

Fascinating! I'm in your camp.

[Rebekka]

I can't picture the words in my head, but once I see a word written once, I can always spell it later, so I guess I don't need to? But I can do the pencil trick.

[sara]

My husband, reading over my shoulder, says "But what about tactile learners?" :)

Sort of a rough go for those of us who can picture the whole word . . . who were never taught to spell right in the first place. I'll write the thing, stop to check the spelling--mostly by seeing if the picture "looks" right. But there are a handful of words that I've spent a lifetime mis-spelling, and my techniques for slowing down and checking the thing one letter at a time are distinctly lacking.

[Erin]

Wow, very interesting! I'm with you and I'm a fellow spelling bee champ too. I remember having to close my eyes on occasion if it was a tough word so that I could "picture it".

[Ruth]

The visualizing thing wouldn't work for me, either....When you posted those videos of classical music, I realized how very NOT a visual learner I was--I kept closing my eyes to enjoy the music better!

[bearing]

I can imagine simple objects rotating and coming apart in my head -- no problem with pencils or cheese graters -- but I suspect Mark can imagine things much more complex in all their parts. The word thing just shocked me because I couldn't imagine not being able to do it.

[MelanieB]

Dom chimes in to tell me that when he sees words they are in Helvetica. He was puzzled that I can't visualize them.

[RealMom4Life]

Very interesting! My dh and I learn very differently and I thank God that we do because we have children that learn very differently. I can try to teach something to a couple kids at once and one will totally grasp it, the other not so much, until my dh jumps in to help (and it's often with a chuckled, "I don't know how anyone can understand it the way you just explained it"....but one of those kids did ;)

I remember reading something recently that if you watch a spelling bee you will often see kids either close their eyes or stare at the ceiling while spelling a word - in either case they picturing the word ;)

[Barbara C.]

That's an interesting exchange. While I do imagine/remember words/text in my mind, and I've always been fairly decent at spelling (and I do really well at Boggle and Scrabble). I would never think, though, to teach a kid to imagine a word to learn to spell it. I would assume that they would have to see it written in order to memorize it as a whole picture. I'm also not sure that their short-term memory could sustain itself to get through a long word.

I always just tell the kids how to spell the words in groups of two to three letters.

On the flip side, I am HORRIBLE at remembering numbers. It takes me forever to learn a new phone number, and forget remembering the prices of groceries.

[Tabitha]

This is fascinating to me. I asked my 13yo dd who has competed at the National Spelling Bee twice if she can see the words in her head. She didn't hesitate with her "yes". I wonder if the contestants were polled how many would say that?

[bearing]

I wish I could remember the names of specific spelling programs or authors, but I know I have encountered in more than one place the advice that studying spelling should include a "picture the word in your mind" step. For example, a child might be supposed to write the word, look at the word, close eyes and imagine the word, look at it again, then cover it up and try to write it down without looking.

I have always taken it for granted that closing eyes and picturing the word was possible, and even easy if one has just looked at the word and if it was not more than, say, eight or ten letters. I guess this technique is not going to work on everyone.

[brooke]

It has been a long time since I visited here. I love reading and am just really enjoying my coffee and reading old posts. When I got to this one, I about jumped out of my body. Literally. :) I am a spelling bee champ who can totally picture just about any word, period. I never knew there was such a thing as not being able to until a couple years ago. It was when we realized my second son was a dyslexic. Dyslexics cannot picture words, but can picture, often, a full engine (or the pencil rotating). It's actually a sign of dyslexia to not be able to picture a word. It's why they can't spell and why they rely on whatever spelling rules they can remember and why they need systematic instruction in every single spelling/reading rule that exists. It's something that I've had to live and breathe for a couple years now, so I'm just fascinated by your post! :) Anyway, I just had to comment!

[bearing]

Thanks for your comment, Brooke! Yeah, my husband probably would be classified as dyslexic -- he frequently transposes letters, even digits in strings of numbers, and other classic examples. It has been edifying, though -- he's an intelligent guy who did well in high school and college and now is good at a job he loves and pays well, so obviously he found coping mechanisms and workarounds -- even though he still would misspell many words if you gave him a quiz.

I wonder sometimes if it might make more sense to teach those coping mechanisms and workarounds. That might be more efficient than to expend an enormous amount of energy and learning time memorizing English spelling in the form of "rules" with many exceptions.