The answer is simple: because they find the content of lecture notes [and other study materials such as textbooks etc.] very hard to take in. This is demotivating because students see no progress in learning and feel the struggle and the rest is…
…well, a disaster! So how can we help?
Have you ever thought about the simple fact that if you read some story, you enjoy reading it, because you make up your internal pictures or even movies of the plot as you read? Well, exactly the point! While in stories there’re lots of concrete nouns [=words that describe people, places, objects] and lots of action verbs [words that describe what one does = action], study materials aimed at the higher education student have very few concrete and loads of abstract nouns [such as descriptions of states, intellectual concepts, and jargon pertaining to the subject of study] and very few action-oriented, but lots of nonspecific, auxiliary, or passive verbs. The key difference is that the concrete nouns and action verbs in stories are easy for us to visualize, while the abstract nouns and compound auxiliary and nonspecific verbs in study materials have no pictures.
To give you an example, here’s a story:
I’m walking down a quiet country lane. Nobody around, just me in my jeans and walking boots, squeezing a half-full bottle of water in my hand. It’s a nice pleasant day, birds are twittering, trees are gently whispering the rustle of their leaves. Suddenly I hear a noise in the distance. It sounds like a motorbike or a car. And then I notice it’s getting closer and closer. Before I realize it, it whizzes past me…
By the way, what was it that whizzed past you as you were imagining this while reading the excerpt above? And what color was it?
And here is an extract from a study material:
The dissociation process is not always effective and often other things must be done to deal effectively with these kinds of problems. in this particular case, however, the process was extraordinarily effective and there were very few repetitions of the common patterns of emotional breakdown.
Well, I believe I’ve proven the point more than enough! And, surprise, surprise, the same applies to legal, corporate, and business documentation – as I already wrote about in one of my much earlier entries.
So how can we help the poor university student to decline the invitation to the next party and give the void time to studying?
Students:
- visualise as much of the content you read as possible! For abstract nouns, you can use symbols, things, places, people, and even colors. Go with whatever comes to mind first. That’ll be somehow significant to your brain – otherwise it wouldn’t have come up!
- Verbs are kind of easier – somehow the brain finds even the passive verb more digestible. But passive verb can easily be transformed into active verb. So, what’s stopping you?
- And once you have clusters of concepts, put them into a story. Make up a movie like a film director – whatever the setting and characters, as long as your brain has some visual representation of what you’re reading that makes sense to you and is an easy anchor for retrieval.
