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[Phys-l] Students' READING abilities



I am mostly a lurker here and have not had a chance to search the
literature, but I was wondering what studies have been done correlating
READING ability with success in science courses. I have seen discussion
here (and elsewhere) about correlations with high school physics, math
skills, Piaget cognitive levels, teaching methods, and others.


But what about reading ability? This came up because I gave a "quiz"
over the famous nonsense poem Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll ("Twas
brillig, and the slithy toves, Did gyre and gimble in the wabe ..."). I
then asked a few questions like "What were the toves like?"

The point I was TRYING to make with the quiz was that it is possible to
read something and get an answer without the least understanding of what
is being said (much like the typical "parrot answers" I get on questions
about the reading). They need to dig deeper and THINK about what the
words mean.

The OTHER lesson I learned is that a small but significant number of
students didn't seem to be able to use the structure of the sentence to
decide that "toves" was the subject of the sentence and "slithy" was an
adjective describing the "toves"! Granted this was an introductory
Physical Science class that draws some of the lower level students at
our community college, but I was still surprised at the results.


Perhaps in addition to teaching science (and math and how to use a
calculator and how to think abstractly), we also need to think about
teaching how to READ!


Tim Folkerts