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VARK Questionnaire Reflection

According to the VARK assessment I just took, I am multimodal, which most people are.

That just means that I have more than one learning style that suites my needs. My two learning

styles are read-write and kinesthetic. I can’t really say that I am surprised by that at all.

The read-write style is pretty self-explanatory. I feel more comfortable and I learn

better if there is something I can read rather than a chart I can look at. That actually makes me

feel better knowing that is considered a learning style and it is completely natural for my brain

to work that way. Now that I am a little older and studying more often, I have noticed that I do

tend to skip over charts and diagrams. Sometimes I end up missing information. I’ll sometimes

go back and try to make sense of them, but I find it much easier to just read about the same

information. It makes much more sense to me in words. A good tip that I saw on the website

for the assessment is to convert charts and graphs into words. I love this idea. I can understand

a chart if I read it; I just generally can’t see the big picture so the information doesn’t stick. I am

going to try this and see if it works for me.

Now, I mentioned before that a diagram will lose me. I have to work really hard to

make my brain make sense of them; but one thing that really spells things out for me is maps.

Not road maps, but sequence maps or cause and effect maps. I think that is the simplest way

to see things. It spells it out clearly and it sticks in my mind like a story. For math, and other

things, I also find that I do need real life examples. This is mostly for procedural knowledge. I

am a claims adjuster and there are a lot of different procedures that we have to do with our

computer system at my company. Now, I can remember the rules that we have to follow and

the laws that apply in certain states, but in order for me to understand how to follow a process

to either make a payment or assign a claim to the proper adjuster, I have to see it done at least

once. Sometimes it works better for me to read instructions and follow along until I get

comfortable with it, but the quickest way to teach me is to do it for me once. After that, I’ve got

it. All of this proves that I am a kinesthetic learner. Kinesthetic learners have to use their senses

to truly grasp information. That’s why we need to experience some things hands- on. That is

why a kinesthetic learner needs to see it done, or hear a real life example, so we can connect it

to something real, something we have experienced. This has convinced me to try to go more

often to tutoring for my accounting class. I am not grasping a lot of the concepts or procedures

and, frankly, I have been disappointed in myself and telling myself that I need to try harder. But

this assessment has made me feel much better and much more confident in my abilities. My

short comings in this class are not because I am not intelligent; I have just been taking the

wrong approach. So, based on this assessment, I am going to make it a point to go to tutoring

more often for my accounting class so that I can see the problems and charts worked out and

that way, hopefully, it will start to make sense to me.

In closing, this assessment is a great tool. I’ve heard many times, from many people that

not everyone learns the same, but this brought that theory to life. I think back to a time when I

sat in an elementary, middle school or high school classroom. I did ok, but so many children

struggle with the material. I saw friends struggle with reading comprehension or math

problems, or understanding the processes of nature we would learn about in science class. The

teacher or classmates would assume that they were not trying or not applying themselves. I’m

sure that was true for some, but maybe not all. How many of those kids were discouraged after

years of trying and they never got the results they were trying for? How many times did they

see disappointed looks on the faces of family and teachers until they convinced themselves that

they were just too stupid and they gave up? Different teachers have different teaching styles

but how many different learning styles do we have in one classroom? I understand, now, how

important it is to nurture these differences and adapt to them. Like I mentioned before, I was

feeling very discouraged in my accounting class. I could not understand why I am not making

the connections I need to make to learn the material. It was even starting to hurt my

confidence as a student. Now that I understand that, with a few adjustments, I can learn and

succeed in this subject and my struggles have not been because I am not smart, just unaware. I

am grateful for this experience because now that I understand myself a little better, I have by

confidence back and I believe I can do much better. I also believe that if we were to administer

this assessment to students long before they get to college, we would be much more effective

with their education. Maybe we could be more selective with teachers and make sure we have

teachers with a variety of teaching styles and schedule children according to their best match.

How much would drop out rates decrease? How many more of our children would succeed?

Just a thought.