Many times when I hear the term ‘learning style’, it leads to an introspection. It leads to quite some days of mulling over on what my learning style is.

A recent mulling over made me made me revisit an experience of mine, that happened quite many years back. In a conversation with a group of people from different walks of life, I shared passionately about vineyards, the different kinds of wines and the process wine tasting. This topic held (holds) a great interest in me, because it also touches upon different places and different cultures; and I love knowing about placs and cultures. I observed that one of the people in the group kept looking at me. He asked, “Do you drink?” When I answered in the negative, he looked even more puzzled. His next question was, “How do you then know all this and especially wine tasting?” I recall even now, my first reaction to that question – a beaming smile :-). My knowledge on this topic was because of my reading. Being an avid reader, there were some books and magazines which gave an insight about wines, vineyards and wine tasting and I was especially attracted to the process of wine tasting. I guess this interest on the topic made me absorb what I read, which reflected in my sharing.

The revisiting of this experience and the introspection of my learning style, made me feel a sense of puzzlement. From what I know, learning thru’ reading and writing didn’t feature in any learning style. It didn’t feature learning from a text format as a learning style. uh oh!!!

The learning styles that I was aware of:

Visual – learning thru’ graphics, images, charts, maps etc

Auditory – learning thru’ what is spoken – casettes, CD’s discourses, group discussions etc

Kinesthetic and Tactile – Some say that both fall in the same category  while some say that they are different. Kinesthetic is associated with movement and that includes learning thru’ dance, sports etc. Tactile is thru’ the medium of touch which includes hands on activities.This also includes learning thru’ experiences.

This is learning thru’ the VAKT method.

There were some other learning styles (amongst the many others) such as (I guess this could be thru’ different mediums)

Solitary (Intra Personal) – learning being by themselves

Social (Inter personal) – learning with others along with them

Verbal or linguistic – learning thru’ the medium of language – spoken and written

Logic and analytical skills – learning thru’ problem solving, patterns, connections.

If none of these learning styles mention about reading and writing and text as the main source of learning, where does that leave my learning style? I know I generally take a ‘road less travelled’ but this was taking that to a different level altogether:-). Was I one of the some setting a different learning style? (some lofty thinking eh!!).

I also took consolation from two known aspects – 1) I learn from experiences which makes me a Kinesthetic / Tactile learner 2) I learn from observing people and myself which kind of falls in both social and solitary (I am not delving into some other learning styles that may help my consoling myself further :-)).

Thank god we have the World Wide Web today, to instantly seek some gratification. I looked up on learning styles to understand more and lo and behold, was I gratified instantly!! I come across a couple of sites that mentioned VARK learning styles – Visual, Auditory, Reading / Writing and Kinesthetic / Tactile.

Seeing reading / writing as a learning style had me super excited and yet a tad unhappy. Excited because someone had updated the learning styles to include this learning style too. A tad unhappy, because it was already labelled as a style and I wasn’t setting anything 🙁 (definitely lofty thinking!!:-)).

My mind connected to the aspect of how Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences connected to the learning styles. (Do I learn thru’ logic / analytical skills too? Now that’s a relevation certainly!) Realised that it was a huge topic that is best left to be explored independently by each of us. How do we do this, will also reflect the learning style of each of us..

Learning happens all the time and thru everything; and this is what makes life interesting and wonderous.

Be a learner always!! Make your life a wonder!!