Visit Visual's, Auditory's and Kinesthetic's houses!!!
And listen to what Witch Hazel has to tell you about this incredible NLP magic...

First of all I’d like to ask you an indiscreet question. When did you last go to a party and enjoyed yourself? Last night? Last month? When you were in your teen-age? It doesn’t matter. You just have to think of some details of that memorable event:  do you still remember the guests’ dresses and faces? Or is it that particular song the host kept playing and playing which keeps glued into your mind? Or do you still feel excited at remembering the game that someone organised in order to enliven the party? Sure there’s some of you who can think only of the delicious food and drinks they had and someone else even associates that fabulous evening with a particular smell like the aroma of pizza or cigarette smoke!

 Just notice that all these particular types of memories belong to five categories:

• Visual memories (guests’ dresses and faces)
• Auditory memories (songs)
• Kinaesthetic memories (games and activities in general)
• Olfactory memories (smells)
• Gustatory memories (food and drinks)

All this means that each of us interprets reality by means of a favourite sensorial channel. Just give a look at the initial letters of the five memories and you get the most famous acronym in Neuro Linguistic Programming:

visual

auditory

kinaesthetic

olfactory

gustatory

Actually the number of people who utilise the last two channels is much inferior to the others since smell and taste are more developed in animals than in the human race. And that is good for our figure: just imagine how difficult it would be to remain fit and slim if your favourite sensory channel was the gustatory one!

Now let’s answer the crucial question:

what does all that have to do with teaching?

Actually the implications are many: first of all, since even teachers are human beings, they have a favourite sensory channel and, believe that or not, they tend to use it in their teaching habits. Just relax and think: do you generally ask students to draw mind maps? Do you use flash cards or visual inputs? Do you tend to get upset if you don’t “see” what’s happening in the right row, bottom desk, between Deborah and Samantha (most common female names I could think of...)? Then you certainly are a visual teacher!

If you like talking a lot and choose your words carefully while cultivating the illusion that your students are listening to you with the utmost attention, there’s no doubt: you are an auditory person! But if you are used to walking up and down the classroom in a restless and energetic style, giving a friendly slap to Giuseppe while pulling Michele’s ear, and forcing your students to follow a very athletic program in order to be up to your Olympic standard, all that means you’re a kinaesthetic teacher, besides being physically in a very good shape! 

As you can see, our teaching styles are strongly influenced by the way we get in touch with reality, that is by our favourite sensory channel. And not only that! The way we communicate and empathise with students is biased by VAK. Let’s think about it a little: what sensory channel do you think most students belong to? From the amateurish informal survey I myself have carried out recently the majority of the children are visual and very very few are auditory. This means that they generally like inputs like photos, images, movies and the Internet, of course, but only a small number of them (the auditory minority) is interested in our speeches. And if you think of those kids who are generally labelled as “disruptive” since they seem to be unable to keep the sitting position for more than five seconds, well they are not monsters but simply kinaesthetic! Ask them to repair the battery of your car and see what they are capable of! I don’t assure you will get your battery back as it were new but they will certainly be absorbed for at least three quarter of an hour by the task of discovering of how many pieces it is made of... and they won’t disturb you at all!

Just to help you discover to what VAK category you belong to as a teacher and as a human being I’ve written this test which I hope may reveal something about your nature that you never guessed. The key is maybe obvious but you will find it only in the next article which, I hope, will come soon...
Bye everybody!

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