Learning Styles

After reading Bain’s Chapter 2 “What Makes an Expert?” I feel that I have been a surface learner in many instances. For example, last year when I took AP Chemistry I really struggled in it and never got very deep into the material being taught. I resonate with Bain’s point as he says surface learners “looked for facts and words they could memorize, attempting to anticipate any questions someone might ask them”. During chem I would always try to absorb as much information I could from the textbook, even though the majority of the class was application based. Being a surface learner did not work out too well for me in that class because I failed at least half of the tests. As Bain puts it “surface learners usually focus only on passing exams, not on ever using anything they read”, which I can completely relate to. Since I had a lot of trouble with this class I wasn’t really focused on learning more on a deeper level. I never really focused on expanding my knowledge of the subject. Like Bain says “if you try to remember something as you attempt to understand it and relate it to other topics and questions, that is fundamentally different than simply trying to poke it into your brain to pass an examination”. If I utilized this strategy I probably would have done better in AP Chem and would have been able to learn more. My experience does relate to Bain’s observations on the drawbacks of surface learning as I feel I did not end up retaining much information and didn’t do well in the class.