Re: [Phys-l] Students' READING abilities

[Jack Uretsky <jlu@hep.anl.gov>]

In other words, if a student finds me incomprehensible, it's all the 
student's fault.  If you ask the student for a ratio, and, as often 
happens, you get back a difference, it was the student's fault that you 
used a word that the student didn't understand.  (See Arons on student 
ignorance of the meaning of certain terms).
			Regards,
				Jack


On Tue, 24 Feb 2009, Michael Edmiston wrote:

> > Mightn't it be a good idea to start talking to them in language they
> > understand and finding out how effective that approach is?
> >  Regards,
> >  Jack
>
> If a student wants to understand, and is therefore actually trying to
> understand, and therefore is actually investing some time in the subject...
> then understanding is going to happen one way or another.  It might first
> hit them from studying the text; it might first make sense during the lab;
> it might first come from the lecture; it might first come from working on a
> problem set; it might first require a visit to my office.  The only times I
> have been unsuccessful with students who are actually trying have been when
> the students have actual learning disabilities or have huge holes in their
> backgrounds that I can't fix in the allotted time.
>
> I don't know what percentage to use, but I would guess that over 90% of my
> students who aren't getting it are in that situation because they aren't
> investing any time in it.  And they aren't investing any time because they
> don't really want to know.  And they don't want to know because they see
> this course as an artificial hurdle.  That is, it's something someone said
> they have to take, but they don't see any reason they should have to take it
> because "they are never going to use any of this stuff in their chosen
> profession."
>
> Lacking the desire to understand the material, I don't think there is any
> language that will be effective.
>
> Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
> Professor of Chemistry and Physics
> Bluffton University
> 1 University Drive
> Bluffton, OH 45817
> 419.358.3270
> edmiston@bluffton.edu
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Forum for Physics Educators
> Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
> https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l

--
"Trust me.  I have a lot of experience at this."
		General Custer's unremembered message to his men,
		just before leading them into the Little Big Horn Valley