I just took the VARK questionnaire about learning styles suggested by Tim Bulkeley. My score came out as

• Visual: 5
• Aural: 0
• Read/Write: 2
• Kinesthetic: 9

This is not one of those questionnaires which gives you a nice bit of HTML to paste your results into your website or blog, which tends to reassure me that, unlike the source of the last set of such results I posted, this is actually a reasonably reliable site.

So, like Tim, I am basically a “kinesthetic” learner (actually the British, and New Zealand, spelling should be “kinaesthetic”), with a second strength of “visual”. We are

the ones who fiddle with their pens while others are talking, and who walk about or wave their hands a lot…

… (Kinesthetic learners do not like sitting still being talked to, or even with 😉

Note the zero score for “aural”. No wonder I find it hard to learn from sermons without visual content. I always find myself distracted from the sermon if there is anything to see or do. This is why I never download podcasts, even ones only five minutes long, sorry Tim.

Unlike Tim, I have experience tertiary education, of a kind, oriented in part to my kinesthetic learning style. I learned Hebrew from the late John Dobson using in part a total physical response method. I remember learning the Hebrew for “stand up”, “sit down” and “turn around” by actually doing these actions at the teacher’s request, and this part has stuck in my memory far better than most of the course. Perhaps if preachers did a bit more of this I might not forget what they said before I get home.

On the other hand, I hate choruses with actions (perhaps because the actions distract me too much), and I don’t like breaking up into small discussion groups (a different aural strategy). If you are not going to give me something relevant to do, just let me fiddle with my pen or wander round the room.