Do you want to find the most effective way for you to learn? You don’t need any expensive programs. You just need to understand your learning style, and then learning at school or on your own will be a lot easier.

Three of the main learning styles are auditory, hands on, and visionary. Read on to discover which one you relate to most and how to incorporate it into your college studying or anywhere else!

Auditory 

Auditory or aural learners find that they learn best through sound. You tend to like lecture and discussion style classes where listening and speaking are how information is conveyed. Often, you “think out loud” to help them process ideas and new concepts.

Ways to Study as an Auditory Learner 

• Take classes that use lecture and discussion
• Record class time to listen to later
• Read textbooks or information and notes out loud
• Take time to think out loud when studying
• Read your written work out loud to help you revise it

Hands On

Also known as kinesthetic learners, hands on learners retain information best when they are moving their bodies while working on a project. You learn by doing. If you’re this type of learner, sitting in a classroom may be difficult for you because experiencing something is how you learn best.

Ways to Study as a Hands On Learner

• Engage in classes that have a lab, workshop, or practicum set up
• Take field trips or study related videos
• Tie studying to physical activities such as role playing
• Projects or creating something
• Flash Cards

Visual

Visual learners take in information best through what they see. You like pictures, graphs, and other visually stimulating ways of gaining information. It’s common for you to use hand gestures while talking to add a visual component to it.

Ways to Study as a Visual Learner

• Find classes where the teacher uses a lot of images, graphics (computer or drawn on a white board), or visual demonstrations while teaching
• Use highlighters or different symbols to organize your notes
• Draw charts or diagrams or use posters
• Try to recall visuals from class or textbook pages

Multiple Learning Styles?

While most people have a preference for one learning style, there are some individuals out there who naturally use more than one style to help them with their scholarship. They are considered multimodal and divided into VARK (visual, auditory, reading/writing, kinesthetic) Type One and VARK Type Two (vark-learn.com/introduction-to-vark/the-vark-modalities/).

VARK Type One learners switch between the different learning styles based on what situation they’re in. They use context to determine what style would help them learn best in the situation.

VARK Type Two learners prefer to engage in all the learning styles while learning something, no matter the situation. They might take longer to learn something because of this, but they often have a broader and deeper understanding of the material after they do grasp it due to learning from multiple formats.

Try Them Out

Not sure what category of learner you best fit into? Go ahead and experiment by trying to learn something new while using what works for the specific styles. Or take the VARK questionnaire at www.vark-learn.com/the-vark-questionnaire.

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