Learning Styles and V.A.R.K.

I'm back, and this time it's writing about learning styles and the VARK questionnaire.

The VARK questionnaire is basically a series of questions with answers for each learning style. The person answering the questions is encouraged to pick the one that they would pick if put in that situation in real life.
For example: - How would you give directions to someone?
This had answers such as: Tell them, write it down, pick them up yourself, or draw on a map.

Each of the letters in VARK represents a different style of learning and the amount of answers you put for each determined how good you are at learning using that style. This 'should' give you a clear view of what learning style suits you.

V = Visual
A = Aural
R = Reading/Writing
K = Kinesthetic

Below are the scores I got from doing this questionnaire. I had a tendency to pick two answers for a large amount of the questions which suggest that I use two learning styles. The actual result I got was quite suprising - for a number of reasons.

• V = 5
• A = 9
• R = 4
• K = 6

As you can see, I got a very varied result. The questionnaire gave me a pretty good score for all of the styles of learning, with Aural learning standing out massively with a 9.

This would mean that I actually have a very good grasp on each style of learning, so can take information from any source if needed, but Aural more so than the rest.

Reflection

One of the reasons I was suprised with this result is because I had seen it before. I remembered doing something on learning styles back at college for my key skills course - and I got the same sort of result there. This is why I tend to agree with this questionnaire.

As for what it means for me:

I think the reason why Reading/Writing came off lower for me is because although I love reading and have very good spelling and grammar, I can't read anything I don't find interesting. I read through a book I find interesting very fast and can't stop myself from reading more, but workbooks not so much. Writing I tend to avoid as much as possible, as I have awful handwriting which is kind of embarassing.

So I can see why R/W would be lower than the other styles of learning. As for them all being quite high figures I can only say a little about without making it look like I'm trying to 'big myself up'. I have found it very easy through school and college to pick things up and remember them, never having to revise and still getting high grades. I actually revised for an exam once and done worse than usual - another thing that may tie in with my low R/W score. I'd guess that this is due to using more than one style all of the time making it more of a deep learning experience.

Lastly Aural. This type of learning came up very high on my questionnaire with a 9, which suggests that the best learning style for me is from listening. I agree with this to an extent, but I'm not completely sure how it stands out so much from the others. While I am more introvert than extrovert, and prefer to sit and listen, I don't think I learn more from that than I would from say, doing something or by looking at charts etc..

Overall, I'd agree with the varied learning style result I got, but not completely with the higher score of Aural learning. I think while it is a big part of my learning style it doesn't stand out quite so much as the questionnaire suggested. For improving my learning I don't think I need to change too much. While Reading/Writing is slightly lower, it is also a necessary part of almost all work and I will eventually improve with that if I carry on learning using all 4 methods like I am.