Right, well, er... my talk today is on learning styles. I chose this because there is a lot of research into it and it seems as if nobody really agrees on how to assess learning styles. I'll start by outlining some competing theories about.How people learn... There aren't any handouts, I'm afraid, but anyway... One theory is the VARK system. V-A-R-K means V for visual, A for auditory, like hearing, R for reading and K for, I don't know how to pronounce this... kinaesthetic? Yes, that's it. Kinaesthetic. That means things like touch, movement and stuff. Anyway, according to the VARK system, depending on your learning style, you learn in different ways.If you're a visual learner, then you need to use charts and pictures, use colour highlighting in your notes, and stuff. If you're an auditory learner, then reading aloud and listening will help you learn. Reading is just reading, of course. You learn by reading. Kinaesthetic learners need to move around while they learn. You're a kind of hands-on person if you're that kind of a learner, so you should revise while standing up and walking around the room, for example. Anyway, that's just one theory. There are lots of others, too.So, to conclude then, personally I think that we all have our own learning styles and we are not just one type or another. In other words, we are probably a blend of lots of styles. I don't think any of the learning styles I've told you about is better than any other. I think the problem is that we all learn in different ways, and try to find a system to fit in all the different ways we learn. We are too creative to be boxed in like that. Not everything about the human brain can be mapped and predicted. How we learn is different for each person, so the point I'm making is I don't know how useful it is to try to categorise everyone into types. Greg thinks that: - by categorising learning styles we can help people to learn very effectively.