To no surprise of my own my preferred learning style, according to vark-learn.com, is kinesthetic. I have known that I am a kinesthetic learner since I was in middle school during a similar assignment. However, I have never thought to research the best way to study to help better understand what I am learning. I now know that being kinesthetic means that I learn better if things are put into real-life perspective. After reviewing the strategies posted on the VARK website I have learned multiple study strategies to best understand the material given in any course. Some of these ways are: using all senses, hands-on approaches, and using pictures to illustrate an idea.
Using all senses is one of the strategies listed for kinesthetic learners such as myself. To put this tip to use in all courses there are certain things I can do. First, taking notes seems to help me better grasp what is going on. I feel if I take notes and write down key words I retain what I am reading better. I do think this will also qualify as using touch. Similarly, when taking notes, I write in multiple different bright colors to appeal to my sight sense. For each topic in the section, I will use a different color. This allows me to recall what color I wrote a specific topic in on my notes and then associate it with other things in that same color. When studying courses online, I do feel it is sometimes a little harder to use hearing because most professors do not post videos. I have learned if I listen to classical music I am more focused and can get more work done. This is a tip I learned from a science teacher I had in middle school and never put it to use in my personal study time until college.
The hands-on approach is another strategy listed for kinesthetic learners. I agree with this wholeheartedly. All through school in all classes I realized if I did not physically do a problem and work it out I would not know how to do it later. Math and science specifically helped me realize this approach. When learning things like long division I had to work out several problems and go through all the steps and draw all the arrows so that I could understand what went where and why. Fast forward in my last year of college I still must work out all math problems and all new concepts if there are multiple steps. In all my studying for my student career, I have not found a better learning strategy for myself than the hands-on approach.
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Last on my list of study strategies is illustrations. Illustrations do prove to be effective repeatedly. For myself, I would use illustrations in the form of charts and even small doodles. For example, I still remember taking notes in a biology class first year of college and drawing pictures to help me distinguish different molecules and what their jobs are. I had drawn pictures of hydrophobic and hydrophilic molecules all over my notes. To this day I can still recall the “heads” of the molecules and the “tails” that were drawn in my notebook.
Examining the strategies, even though I have never researched on my own, I now realize how lucky I am to have been taught study habits that work for me and my learning style. As you can probably imagine, after reading my techniques, my notes are always entertaining. I do think the bright colors, step by step detail and pictures help tremendously when test time rolls around. I find it very interesting how different people learn. Though we cannot all be lucky enough to just read and comprehend all the material, I am glad I have found and continue to find strategies that work for me.
