Everyone has a different learning pattern. It means you have a preference for a particular learning style and you learn better while participating in a particular learning style. Most people have a learning style that is a mixture of different styles, but we all have one dominant style or pattern of learning which we prefer the most. Our dominant style is the best way for learning new things. Although, it might not stay the same for all other tasks. We prefer different styles for different tasks or combinations of styles.

VAK model stands for Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic Model. It is a model which uses three of our sensory receivers, namely visual, auditory, and kinesthetic to determine our dominant style. The VAK model was developed by psychologists in the early 1920s to classify the ways people learn best. It has the most common method to learn about learning patterns and its popularity is mainly due to its simplicity.

According to the model, most of us prefer to learn in one of the ways: Visual (i.e. learn through seeing), Auditory (i.e. learn through hearing) and Kinesthetic (i.e. learn through touching and moving).

Getting to know about your dominant learning skill helps in better performance and it spikes your confidence.

In this article, we will learn about the different styles in the VAK model and try to find out which style is preferable to you.

Hints for recognizing VAK Styles

Visual Learning Style

These learners are visual linguistics who like to learn through written language like reading or writing. These learners need to see the facial expressions of the teacher to understand better. They prefer to sit in front and prefer any kind of visual help. From the movements and positions of the speaker, they could understand the concept better. With the help of charts, videos, textbooks, maps, diagrams, interactive whiteboards, and handouts they can perform much better.

These learners prefer to take detailed notes to learn better. They tend to remember better after they have written down.

Visual learning style learners think in pictures and create images to retain information.

Auditory Learning Style

These learners learn best through verbal lessons, discussions, questions, and listening to what others have to say. They best learn when they focus on the pitch and tone of the voice. They could easily understand the underlying message in the sentence. They learn better when they read aloud and hear their own words.

They work better when they discuss their ideas, work in study groups, recite information, and repeat instructions.

They often talk to themselves and seem to calm better when they do so. The reading or writing tasks are difficult to deal with. They are generally good at speaking and listening.

These learners need to say the question again before answering it. They think in words rather than pictures. They like to sort things out by talking about them. They need to say things through to understand the gravity of it.

Kinesthetic Learning style

They learn best with the hands-on approach, by doing the activity and exploring the world around them. They find it incredibly hard to sit down for long hours and get distracted by the need of activity. They lose focus if there is no movement. They make notes for the sake of activity and colourful doodling could be found on their notebooks. They use colour high lighters and take notes while drawing the picture. When they are given a reading material they scan it first before reading it down. Music helps them concentrate better while learning.

They find it difficult to deal with the conventional ways of teaching and they need to find activities to spend their activity.

These learners express themselves through movement and they generally have good eye-hand coordination. They have a great talent for dancing, hands-on experiment, using body language, athletic ability etc.

They learn fast while doing any physical activity so they are advised to read things through while walking.