What's Your Learning Style? The VARK Model Explained

Why Some Training Sessions Feel Completely Useless

Have you ever sat through a training session where you completely zoned out? Or read a technical book and retained nothing, while a colleague found it packed with insights? It's not a matter of intelligence or motivation. It's often a matter of learning style.

The VARK model, developed by Neil Fleming in 1987 in New Zealand, proposes a powerful idea: each of us has a preferred sensory mode for receiving and processing information. And when the learning format matches your style, retention and comprehension increase dramatically.

The Origins of the VARK Model

Neil Fleming was a school inspector. By observing hundreds of classrooms, he noticed that the best teachers instinctively adapted their teaching to different modes of perception. He formalized these observations into four styles, forming the acronym VARK: Visual, Aural, Read/Write, and Kinesthetic.

The model quickly spread through the education world, then into business. Today, it's used in professional training, coaching, and personal development. Its strength lies in being simple, immediate, and actionable.

The 4 Learning Styles

V - Visual

How you learn: Through images, diagrams, graphs, charts, and mind maps. You retain what you see, not what you read word for word.

Signs you're Visual:

• You take notes in the form of diagrams or arrows
• You understand a process better with a chart than with text
• You remember faces but not names
• You use colors to organize your ideas

Tips to optimize your learning:

• Transform your notes into mind maps
• Use color coding to categorize information
• Look for infographics and diagrams rather than long texts
• Draw concepts, even roughly
• Use tools like Miro, Excalidraw, or even a simple whiteboard

At work: Ask for visuals in meetings. When someone explains a process, draw it. For your presentations, favor diagrams over bullet points.

A - Aural

How you learn: Through listening, discussion, and verbal explanation. You retain what you hear and what you articulate out loud.

Signs you're Aural:

• You easily remember conversations
• You learn by explaining to others
• You talk to yourself when thinking (or have an intense internal dialogue)
• Podcasts and lectures resonate with you more than books

Tips to optimize your learning:

• Listen to podcasts and audiobooks on topics that interest you
• Record your notes and listen back
• Form discussion groups to explore a topic
• Rephrase what you've just learned out loud
• Explain concepts to someone else (or even to yourself)

At work: Participate actively in meetings. If you need to read a long document, try summarizing it out loud afterward. To memorize a procedure, explain it to a colleague.

Key takeaway: The best test to know if you're Aural: if you retain information better by explaining it to someone else than by rereading it three times, then listening and speaking are your preferred channels.

R - Read/Write

How you learn: Through written text, lists, manuals, and detailed note-taking. You retain what you read and what you write.

Signs you're Read/Write:

• You take detailed notes during meetings
• You prefer reading an email to listening to a voice message
• You make lists for everything (tasks, ideas, groceries)
• You retain information better when you've written it down

Tips to optimize your learning:

• Rewrite your notes after each training session or meeting
• Read articles, books, and written documentation
• Keep a learning journal where you summarize what you've retained
• Turn oral presentations into detailed written notes
• Use flashcards with definitions and lists

At work: Ask for written materials after meetings. Write meeting minutes (it's useful for others too). Document your processes in writing.

K - Kinesthetic

How you learn: Through experience, practice, and movement. You need to do things to understand them. Theory alone doesn't cut it.

Signs you're Kinesthetic:

• You retain better by doing than by watching or listening
• You struggle to sit still for long periods
• You rely heavily on concrete examples and analogies
• You prefer hands-on workshops to lectures

Tips to optimize your learning:

• Put what you learn into practice immediately
• Seek out exercises, case studies, and simulations
• Move while you think (walk, pace around)
• Use physical objects to represent concepts
• Choose workshop-style training over lecture-style presentations

At work: Propose hands-on workshops rather than theoretical meetings. When learning a new tool, start using it rather than reading the manual. Build prototypes and run quick tests.

Key takeaway: Kinesthetic learners are often underestimated in traditional education systems based on listening and reading. If you've always felt like you learned "slowly," the problem might not have been you -- it was the format.

Multimodal: What If You Have Multiple Styles?

Fleming himself emphasized that many people are multimodal. You might be primarily Visual with a strong Kinesthetic component, or balanced across all four styles. That's actually quite common.

The point isn't to box yourself in, but to understand your preferences so you can:

• Adapt your learning methods when you have a choice of format
• Compensate when the imposed format doesn't match your style
• Communicate better by presenting information in multiple ways

Key takeaway: You're not locked into a single style. Most people are multimodal. The goal isn't to put yourself in a box, but to understand your preferences for more effective learning.

Key takeaway: Varying learning formats (visual, oral, written, hands-on) benefits everyone, regardless of their dominant style. The multimodal approach is the most robust.

VARK in the Workplace: Beyond the Individual

Training and Onboarding

If you're designing training programs, think about covering all four styles. Good onboarding combines:

• Written documents (R)
• Diagrams and visuals (V)
• Explanation sessions with a mentor (A)
• Hands-on practice scenarios (K)

Management

Understanding your team members' VARK styles helps you adapt your communication. Some people retain a verbal briefing better, others need a summary email, still others need a diagram or a hands-on exercise.

Teamwork

On a project, Visuals can handle presentations and diagrams, R/W learners can manage documentation, Aural learners can coordinate check-ins, and Kinesthetic learners can handle prototypes and testing.

What VARK Doesn't Tell You

The model has its limitations, and it's important to know them:

• VARK doesn't measure intelligence or learning capacity. It describes a preference, not an aptitude.
• Context influences your style. You might be Aural for languages and Visual for mathematics.
• Some researchers debate the effectiveness of strictly adapting teaching to the dominant style. The multimodal approach (varying formats) seems beneficial for everyone.

Key takeaway: VARK describes a sensory preference, not intellectual capacity. One learning style is neither better nor worse than another.

Identify Your Dominant Style

Knowing your VARK profile is a shortcut to more effective learning. Whether you're in training, making a career change, or simply curious about optimizing how you learn, this framework will be useful in your daily life.

Discover your learning style with our free VARK test and get personalized tips to learn more effectively.