Posted on 04/18/2016 3:18:12 PM PDT by daisy12
University students are increasingly unable to read a whole book as they simply don’t have the concentration spans required, nor are they able to understand complex, nuanced arguments, academics have said.
Lecturers at leading British universities are having to actively encourage students to read beyond the set texts, and have noticed that students are increasingly unwilling to read whole texts. They say they believe internet culture is to blame, as young people nowadays are used to receiving arguments in the form of 800-1000 word articles. Anything beyond that, they say, is now proving too challenging.
“Incoming undergraduates have had their attention habits fashioned in a totally different world than that of those who are teaching them,” Tamson Pietsch, fellow in history at the University of Sydney told Times Higher Education (THE).
“This can lead to a clash of expectations and also of abilities on both sides of the equation. In many ways, incoming students absorb information quickly, they understand the power of images, and are adept at moving between different types of sources and platforms. They are perhaps less used to concentrating for long periods of time and working through the nuances of an argument developed over the course of many pages.”
Jenny Pickerill, professor in environmental geography at the University of Sheffield, said of full length books: “students struggle with them, saying the language or concepts are too hard.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Me too as well as most other historical, technical, how to, and military one I could find.
My greek is not what it was
ἐβουλόμην μέν, ὦ ἄνδρες, τὴν δύναμιν τοῦ λέγειν καὶ τὴν ἐμπειρίαν τῶν πραγμάτων ἐξ ἴσου μοι καθεστάναι τῇ τε συμφορᾷ καὶ τοῖς κακοῖς τοῖς γεγενημένοις: νῦν δὲ τοῦ μὲν πεπείραμαι πέρᾳ τοῦ προσήκοντος, τοῦ δὲ ἐνδεής εἰμι μᾶλλον τοῦ συμφέροντος.
Heh....Tolkien hadn't been published yet when I was in elementary school, but I was reading Sir Walter Scott.
They just have to listen to their new singer, Newaunsay.
I also especially loved how math & physics departments demanded the latest editions of textbooks for introductory courses in math and physics, because we know there have been so many breakthroughs in the last few years in how to perform algebra, trig, differential and integral calculus! And how much basic statics, mechanics, optics, and em have advanced over the last few years!
And those were always some of the most expensive books too!
Mark
They're just trying to prepare a population for demonrat rule, and ensure that it stays that way.
Mark
My eleven year old grand daughter has read almost all of the Little House books, She has read Dickens and other authors that are three to ten years beyond her prescribed reading level.
I also have a grandson, not yet in high school that is becoming proficient in Latin — as well as Star Wars lore.
My mother tricked me into loving reading... When I was little, she'd read to me every night before bed. ERB's Tarzan and Mars series, CS Lewis' "Out of the Silent Planes" series, and Jules Vern. We'd cuddle while she read, and she'd have me follow along. Eventually she'd have me "help" her read, and as I began to read more and more, eventually I wound up reading to her.
According to my private Hebrew Day School achievement tests, I was reading at a 12th grade level in 5th grade.
I still love reading, but rarely have time to read for pleasure: I spend far too much time reading technical and training manuals for work (network administration and management.)
But one day soon, I'm going to re-read Terry Brooks' "Sword of Shanara" trilogy (I have to admit, the MTV series made me want to re-visit those books!)
Mark
Oh, the irony! The link, as is typical, is nothing but a peddler jangling his wares in your face. Two seconds is all I can take of that stuff. When they take away the red X, we'll be lost.
What, no Klingon?
Mark
Oh, man, I remember my girlfriend freshman year of high school used to do that. We didn’t share any classes, just a study period, so she would always be writing notes in class and passing them to me in the halls, and of course I was obligated to write back, so I’m sure she had a box of my notes too.
She turned out to be a psycho, but hey, we had a decent correspondence at least :)
lol. at least you’re talking freshman high school.
this was college 3rd year!! page after page after page after page.
I’d reply with a “thanks”
An ox is sick.
We'll take that as a typo :-)
When I was a kid, I devoured "Juvenile Science Fiction", the memories of which are still vivid to me. My dad touted The Sea/20K Leagues to me, as that was his version of the genre. One year at the shore I read his actual copy. I eventually read the whole thing, but I may have stalled once or twice. The passage I remember in that regard is as follows:
From the daily notes kept by Mr. Conseil, I also retrieve certain fish from the genus Tetradon unique to these seas: southern puffers with red backs and white chests distinguished by three lengthwise rows of filaments, and jugfish, seven inches long, decked out in the brightest colors. Then, as specimens of other genera, blowfish resembling a dark brown egg, furrowed with white bands, and lacking tails; globefish, genuine porcupines of the sea, armed with stings and able to inflate themselves until they look like a pin cushion bristling with needles; seahorses common to every ocean; flying dragonfish with long snouts and highly distended pectoral fins shaped like wings, which enable them, if not to fly, at least to spring into the air; spatula–shaped paddlefish whose tails are covered with many scaly rings; snipefish with long jaws, excellent animals twenty–five centimeters long and gleaming with the most cheerful colors; bluish gray dragonets with wrinkled heads; myriads of leaping blennies with black stripes and long pectoral fins, gliding over the surface of the water with prodigious speed; delicious sailfish that can hoist their fins in a favorable current like so many unfurled sails; splendid nurseryfish on which nature has lavished yellow, azure, silver, and gold; yellow mackerel with wings made of filaments; bullheads forever spattered with mud, which make distinct hissing sounds; sea robins whose livers are thought to be poisonous; ladyfish that can flutter their eyelids; finally, archerfish with long, tubular snouts, real oceangoing flycatchers, armed with a rifle unforeseen by either Remington or Chassepot: it slays insects by shooting them with a simple drop of water.
I'm sure their are other such passages, but I choose to believe this is it. I think it was "the genus Tetradon" which transfixed me. Just now I expected to find a passage peppered with such nomenclature. Maybe it's there somewhere, but I think this was too much for me, anyway.
Lots of majors do not need calculus, and I have an engineering degree.
Depends on the major. My daughter is going to get her masters in Speech pathology.
She’s getting her undergraduate in communications disorders.
There are not a lot of colleges that offer the prerequisites for the masters in Speech pathology.
When I was six my family got a black kitten. I had just read an article about the purchase of Alaska, which was known as “Seward’s Folly” back then. I was charmed by the word “folly” and so that’s what we named the new cat.
I’ve been addicted to reading since I was a tyke. I grew up not realizing that other people didn’t read the way I did. My local suburban library was very fussy about preventing me from taking out books other than from the children’s shelf, but then I discovered I could take the Woodward streetcar to the Detroit City Library downtown and they let me take out any old book I wanted.
Probably because they put too many words in them...and words are hard.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.