The acronym VARK stands for Visual, Aural, Read/write, and Kinesthetic sensory modalities that are used for learning information. Fleming and Mills (1992) suggested four categories that seemed to reflect the experiences of the students and teachers. Although there is some overlap between categories, they are defined as follows. [For a detailed description of the initial construction and limitations of VARK, and for other works on learning styles, see the bibliography and the seminal article.]

Visual (V):

This preference includes the depiction of information in maps, spider diagrams, charts, graphs, flow charts, labelled diagrams, and all the symbolic arrows, circles, hierarchies and other devices, that instructors use to represent what could have been presented in words. It could have been called Graphic (G) as that better explains what it covers. It does NOT include movies, videos or PowerPoint. It does include designs, whitespace, patterns, shapes and the different formats that are used to highlight and convey information.

 

To reach your goals, VISUAL learners need to create a vision board that contains images that evoke passion, excitement and stimulate you.  Goals without  a tangible visual concept often are not achieved.

Aural / Auditory (A):

This perceptual mode describes a preference for information that is “heard or spoken.” Students with this modality report that they learn best from lectures, tutorials, tapes, group discussion, email, using mobile phones, speaking, web chat and talking things through. It includes talking out loud as well as talking to yourself. Often people with this prefernce want to sort things out by speaking, rather than sorting things out and then speaking.

 

Aural learners can often associate their goals with a particular song, sound or voice.  Relating these sounds to the goals set can be a recurring reminder and stimulator to achieving them.

Read/write (R):

This preference is for information displayed as words. Not surprisingly, many academics have a strong preference for this modality. This preference emphasises text-based input and output – reading and writing in all its forms. People who prefer this modality are often addicted to PowerPoint, the Internet, lists, filofaxes, dictionaries, thesauri,quotations and words, words, words…

 

Many people appear to some as ‘well organised’.  Whilst they may be well organised, they may also fall into the category of READ/WRITE learners.  Read/ write learners are list makers.  They list their goals with dates set to achieve them by.  Often these people write ‘to do’ lists for the ‘to do’ lists.  For health & fitness goals, the lists may be extensive as many variables come into play when dealing with human emotions, habits and desires.

Kinesthetic (K):

By definition, this modality refers to the “perceptual preference related to the use of experience and practice (simulated or real).” Although such an experience may invoke other modalities, the key is that people who prefer this mode are connected to reality, “either through concrete personal experiences, examples, practice or simulation” [See Fleming & Mills, 1992, pp. 140-141]. It includes demonstrations, simulations, videos and movies of “real” things, as well as case studies, practice and applications.

 

KINESTHETIC learners need to physically experience their goals.  Sounds strange but the best way for them to achieve their goals is to be in the setting and be able to visualise themselves there on their own terms.  For example, they may travel to a dream destination but not be at their goal weight.  When at the destination, they can visualise their next trip to this dream spot.  In this vivid visualisation, they will be their goal weight, wearing the dress or eating the meal they so desire.

What about Mixtures? Multimodals (MM):

Life is multimodal. There are seldom instances where one mode is used, or is sufficient, so we have a four-part VARK profile. That is why the VARK questionnaire gives you four scores. Those who prefer many modes almost equally are of two types. There are those who are context specific who choose a single mode to suit the occasion or situation. There are others who are not satisfied until they have had input (or output) in all of their preferred modes. They take longer to gather information from each mode and, as a result, they often have a deeper and broader understanding.

 

MULTIMODAL learners will have the most feedback to achieve their goals.  They will visualise, set up vision boards, they will associate sounds to their goals and may also create ‘to do’ lists and experience the goals in part.  They may only mix two modalities or all four.