VARK Questionnaire

The VARK questionnaire aims to find out about the preferences for the way people work with information. Everyone has a preferred learning style and one part of it is the preference for the intake and output of ideas and information.

VARK stands for: Visual, Aural, Read/write, and Kinesthetic. Neil Fleming came up with the VARK questionnaire and learning inventory in 1987. Visual learners prefer thinking in pictures or visual aids, auditory learners learn best through listening, some people prefer reading and writing, whilst finally kinesthetic learners use experience or doing things as their main way or learning.

It is used by people around the world to aid their learning and get the best out of it by using the type which is most suited for them.

The questionnaire itself includes 16 questions, each with a type of answer which relates to either visual, aural, read/write and kinesthetic. At the end of the questionnaire you add up and score each to find your particular VARK learning preference. My scores worked out as:

Visual: 6
Aural: 2
Read/write: 5
Kinesthetic: 3

From these scores I can see that when learning I lean towards the visual and read/write styles. This I can see is in keeping with my personality, as I am sometimes against aural learning due to sometimes short attention spans. Whilst I feel I can learn well by doing things and by gaining experience, I feel my fear for being embarrassed when learning can hold me back, so I sometimes look to other styles. I am more confident when reading and writing which means I learn better using these styles.

I did find that with many of the questions I wanted to choose multiple answers or could not decide on one, most questions I did not really have a preference to the method of answering, which made me feel that the questionnaire might have been a bit inaccurate for me.
I still feel that it does depend on the circumstance to as what I think my best learning style is.