Aural Learner?

When I was studying to be an English teacher I did one of those "What type of learner are you?" tests. Turns out I lean more towards Aural/Kinesthetic than towards visual. Which makes sense. You can show me slides all day and I won't remember shit, but if I can remember someone's tone of voice or participate in some way, stuff sticks in my head. Especially true for language learning.

But looking back I think I have to change one of my answers. So the stereotype is that aural learners have trouble with writing and drawing. Which is not at all the case with me. I'm not artist, but I did take some art classes in high school and never had a problem using visual perspective of flipping a drawing to make the mirror image. I have boxes of notebooks in my bedroom at home filled with diaries and story notebooks. Don't tell me I have trouble with writing.

However, when I stop to actually observe my writing, I'm noticing that I actually suck at concentrating. Sometimes I can barely write a sentence without mixing up words! (Especially if there's distractions in the room.) Instead of writing similar letters or misspelling a word, I tend to write a different word that just sounds a little bit like the word I want. Like "creaky" for "creepy," or "up" for "of," or "worse" for "worth." Like I'll be reading along later and suddenly come on this random word that shouldn't be there at all. It's like I was taking down dictation for someone and kept mishearing things.

Once I caught myself writing the kanji for "watashi" instead of the hiragana for "ha" (pronounced "wa"). So now I'm even doing it in Japanese! And I'm still mixing up words based on sound, though occasionally I put the wrong strokes in kanji too.

In the end, I guess my conclusion is your learning proclivity doesn't matter if you have enough determination. I may not have the visual skills to distinguish letters easily, but if writing is important to me I'm going to keep doing it anyway.