Why Are Textbooks So Hard to Read
College ED TEACHING STRATEGIES FROM MAGNA PUBLICATIONS
- Educational activity and Learning
Why It's And so Hard to Get Students to Read the Textbook, and What Happens When They Practice
- November 13, 2009
- Tracey E. Ryan
"Do we really need to purchase the textbook? It's so expensive!"
"Can't you just summarize it for us?"
"Would y'all just tell us what parts will exist on the test?"
"It was so long and and so boring. I couldn't get through information technology!"
Quotes like these indicate that many of our students want us to help them with the difficult work of extracting difficult cloth and new vocabulary from their textbooks. They may employ the term "boring," merely what they really mean is difficult and fourth dimension consuming. In turn, nosotros sometimes fall into the trap of summarizing the textbook in our lectures and PowerPoint presentations.
In my experience didactics psychology at the university and community higher level, I have been flattered by student praise for "making the concepts seem easy." Recently, however, I am finding myself troubled past the trend of making information technology seem easy for students. I accept been reminding myself and my students that there are important reasons why they should do the hard piece of work of reading the textbook on their own.
Here are merely a few conclusions I've made regarding the challenges and importance of getting students to read the textbook.
- Many of our students are poor readers. They frequently don't know how to extract cardinal information from the textbook, even when the textbook is "user friendly" and written at a lower reading level than a standard college text. I discovered this by asking my novice students to read out loud in class. If you've never done this, I recommend that you endeavor it.
- Most of our novice students know fiddling about the structure of their textbook, how the chapters are organized, and how each department is painstakingly validated with electric current enquiry. Most don't preview and browse the text before reading, every bit good readers usually do.
- When students grapple with the text before course what happens during form makes much more sense. Such prior preparation results in students having a deeper agreement of key concepts and makes it easier for them to integrate those concepts into their own lives.
- They learn the deviation between informed and uninformed discussion. When students accept read the material before grade, discussions in class are richer and more than fun, not only for the teacher but for the students likewise.
- Coming to class prepared and with some background noesis transforms students from passive to agile learners. They stop doing stenography and start doing the kind of critical thinking that promotes learning.
For these reasons, information technology is worth the endeavor it takes to go students to come to class having done the reading!
Excerpted from What Textbook Reading Teaches Students, The Education Professor, April 2008.
Tracey Due east. Ryan is a professor at the University of Bridgeport, CT.
Source: https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-and-learning/why-its-so-hard-to-get-students-to-read-the-textbook-and-what-happens-when-they-do/
This Post Has 5 Comments
Santiago 2 Feb 2013
Newer textbooks are only filled with the same matter that older textbooks already have. I think its complete bullshit how expensive they are. Its all well-nigh the money, and near of them add a agglomeration of unnecessary information only to make the book seem "professional person". Nearly all college students don't care, they just want to pass the class. All these full general education classes are a waste of time, merely to supply more careers for professors and to make more than coin for universities. Honestly, do colleges really believe that students are going to remember at least 20% of what they learned in full general didactics classes. I can about guarantee college students forget well-nigh 90% of everything they "learned" in all general ed classes.
tiare 26 Jan 2014
we are in the 21st century and aye students need to know how to read merely when yous are in high school like me y'all just go assigned pages to read and write notes on it. so are you telling me instead of people making it easier and saying what parts are more important, teachers are going to spend mounds of money on textbooks for us to read when teachers know that textbooks are fashion to long and boring and could be simplified some other way. student do not want to read textbooks because they are not interesting and therefore they wont read. teachers always recall if y'all heighten the points on the reading that students would actually exercise them. me personally wouldn't read because it is to hard to stay in my room for ii hours doing notes that could have been simplified past the teacher creating those power points.
Jerry ODell 5 Aug 2014
I taught statistics for 31 years, and the answer is simple. If you dont read page 1, yous won't sympathise page 2.
This sequence goes on until you are completely lost past page v (unless you become a actually meaningless volume) —
say there'south a good idea. Write books with no meaning , and you'll make a fortune.
The sad office is just that some people tin can't understand math. Or won't do any piece of work.
I had to deal with this problem for 31 years. The administration loves the money, tho jwo
Mom knows best 10 Jan 2015
bmj seven Sep 2014
I accept a dissimilar view — they are deadening because they are just plain badly written. Many utilise a poor, overly wordy writing style, aye especially statistics textbooks, that take uncomplicated concepts and hid them behind barricades of obscure writing. This is an example from my daughters textbook tonight (and what brought me to this site):
"In this way the quantitative content caught in the dot product formalism comes from the analogical multiplication that arises past projecting one vector onto some other."
What the heck does that even mean? OK, I know because I've been a practicing physicist for xxx years, but I knew earlier reading that sentence. But if I were a pupil reading that passage, I'd want to throw the book into the lake and run screaming into the dark.
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