Read/Write

In-Depth Description

You say you prefer what you read and write to what you hear or practice. That is the core of the Reading/Writing profile in the VARK model, published by Neil Fleming and Colleen Mills (Fleming and Mills, 1992). When you have the choice, you go for a well-structured textbook, an in-depth article, your own notes or a list of steps rather than an oral explanation, even a clear one.

It is not a question of intellectual level or of an aversion to other formats. It is a format you prefer. Faced with a dense paragraph, you like to break it down, rank it, reorganize it. When you hear an important idea spoken, your reflex is to write it down right away.

In everyday life, this shows in your habits. You take notes even when no one asks you to. You write meeting summaries for yourself alone, not to share them. You build lists of arguments before a difficult conversation. You reread your emails twice before sending them because the exact word matters. And you probably have a notebook, a notes file or a card system.

The VARK model deserves credit for reminding teachers that not all students like the same formats. But it is important to be honest about its limits. The review by Harold Pashler and colleagues (2008, Psychological Science in the Public Interest) found no solid evidence that teaching in a student's preferred style improves their results. And among 426 anatomy students, Polly Husmann and Valerie O'Loughlin (2019, Anatomical Sciences Education) found no link between studying according to one's VARK profile and the grades obtained. In other words: your preference for the written word is real, but reading and copying out will not make you learn better. It is a preference, not a ceiling.

What the Reading/Writing profile tells you is which format you most readily use to get into a subject. A trap awaits lovers of the written word: rereading and highlighting feel like work, but they are among the least useful techniques (Dunlosky et al., 2013). Your taste for writing finds its best use elsewhere: flashcards with the question on the front and the answer on the back, and writing down from memory what you retained before reopening the material.

Strengths in Detail

Your first strength is your ability to turn a disorderly mass of information into a clear structure. When you are handed a complex subject, you read, you break it down, and you produce a document that organizes the steps, the criteria, the exceptions. This taste for synthesis, meaning extracting the essentials from a rich source and rephrasing them readably, is valuable in environments where information is abundant but poorly sorted.

Your second strength is the care you put into your written communication. You structure your emails, you make sure your minutes are readable, you try to get to the point. In teams where documentation is neglected, you often become the reference: what you write circulates and lasts, where an oral explanation fades.

Your third strength is your comfort with dense text. A thirty-page academic article, a contract in small print, technical documentation: where others tune out, you settle in. You read slowly if necessary, you annotate, you rephrase. This comfort with complex writing is valuable in fields where mastering a written body of work is what expertise depends on.

Areas to Watch

Your first blind spot is depending on written material to get started. Without a written brief, without an agenda in advance, without notes at hand, you struggle to get going. When a manager simply tells you "figure it out" without putting anything in writing, you find yourself flying blind, which can make you slower or more hesitant in very agile environments where speech comes first.

Your second blind spot is discomfort with purely oral or practical learning. A hands-on demonstration, an improvised brief in a hallway, an entirely oral course with no material: in these contexts, you feel the information is escaping you if you could not write it down. You often have to ask for a written summary afterward or reconstruct what was said yourself, which costs you time and energy.

Your third blind spot is perfectionism in writing. You reread, you rephrase, you refine. It is a strength for important deliverables, but a source of slowness in situations that call for a quick answer. Setting a rereading quota (once is enough for routine messages) and accepting that an email at 90% is better than a perfect email sent too late are concrete adjustments you can practice.

Compatibility

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