Checklist: practitioners may use a number of questions or a scale to check off each time a characteristic or behaviour is noted. This observation technique could be used if a learner is pursuing a job as a customer service representative and wants to improve his/her listening by decreasing the amount of times he/she may interrupt a person's conversation. During class discussion the practitioner could record the frequency of interruptions made by the learner to see if he/she is improving over a period of time.

Regardless of the observation technique used, a few cautions should be exercised when making conclusions. First, the observations should be done during a number of circumstances and in different surroundings to ensure a pattern is noted. Second, a practitioner may want to have other practitioners observe at the same time or on their own to confirm observations.

Making a quick assumption about an adult's behaviour could not only prove to be harmful to the learner if the practitioner's assumption is incorrect, but it could also lead to the development of inappropriate learning/teaching strategies. Many of our learners have numerous life circumstances that could interfere with their ability to learn, so by observing any interference in learning over time and by confirming them with the learner you can feel confident that your assumptions are correct.

Questions practitioners may consider asking:

To help understand the impact of the potential learning disability, practitioners can ask the following questions which are designed to seek information about the problem. These questions will help practitioners understand what is keeping the learner from being able to achieve.

• In what physical environment do they learn best?
• What is useful, debilitating, or neutral about the way they approach the task?
• Can the learner hold multiple pieces of information in memory and then act upon them?
• How does increasing or slowing the speed of instruction impact upon the student's accuracy?
• What processing mechanisms are being taxed in any given task (visual, auditory, organizational, memory)?
• How does the learner respond to a certain teaching style?
• With whom has the learner been successful? What about the person seems to have contributed to their success?
• What is encouraging to the learner? What is discouraging?
• How does manipulating the mode of teaching (e.g. visual or auditory presentation) affect a learner's performance?²⁶