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University Students Are Unable to Read a Whole Book
Breitbart ^ | 17 April 2016 | Donna Rachel Edmunds

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 ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: bookreading; concentration; education; highereducation; literacy; literature; trends
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To: Pollster1

I agree with that! I actually think reading is a must no matter what your major. Engineers still need to be able to read and write.


101 posted on 04/18/2016 6:50:14 PM PDT by luckystarmom
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To: Kipp
>>>It’s astounding to me that today there are kids in college who don’t know who the first American president was.<<<

Your point is moot. The founding fathers were all a bunch of white racists, so it matters not.

/sarcasm

102 posted on 04/18/2016 6:51:30 PM PDT by fone (Proverbs 109.8)
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To: CaptainK

My 7th garde teacher made us all read Pilgrims Progress. I still remember the Slough of Despond, trying to wade through that tome.


103 posted on 04/18/2016 6:55:21 PM PDT by jacquej ("You cannot have a conservative government with a liberal culture." (Mark Steyn))
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To: GreenHornet
....or cursive?

She sees what you did there.


104 posted on 04/18/2016 7:06:02 PM PDT by LostInBayport (When there are more people riding in the cart than there are pulling it, the cart stops moving...)
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To: Fred Hayek
Sine of 45 degrees (or pi/8 radians if you prefer) is one of those things a person memorized.

Does one memorize it ? Like "Arms and the man" ? Or does one KNOW it, by its definition?

105 posted on 04/18/2016 7:26:06 PM PDT by dr_lew
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To: GenXteacher; GraceG; beaversmom
Hey, All the Oregon Trail's are Great Games, and I must admit when we did get to play them a handful of times in elementary schools we squeed in excitement!
106 posted on 04/18/2016 7:31:45 PM PDT by KC_Lion (Everyone Does Know that after the Last Brokered Republican Convention, They Lost, Right?)
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To: LoneStarGI

There’s a great racket among college profs who write and publish their own textbooks and require the students to purchase them. At $100 a pop and large class sizes they are pulling in some serious money every year.


107 posted on 04/18/2016 7:36:21 PM PDT by Rebelbase
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To: daisy12

Pssssh. Reading is for sissies.


108 posted on 04/18/2016 7:50:46 PM PDT by Yashcheritsiy (You can't have a constitution without a country to go with it)
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To: mountn man

I was an expert on Greek mythology by the 6th grade.

And was a solid amateur in Norse mythology.


109 posted on 04/18/2016 7:55:56 PM PDT by Yashcheritsiy (You can't have a constitution without a country to go with it)
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To: jacquej

I took it upon myself to read GWTW.

What your teacher did was an act of cruelty.


110 posted on 04/18/2016 8:03:59 PM PDT by CaptainK (...please make it stop. Shake a can of pennies at it.)
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To: dr_lew

One has to know it as the ratios. I had a drafting board in the eighth grade (this is way before anything like AutoCAD), along with a Machinery Handbook.


111 posted on 04/18/2016 8:04:26 PM PDT by Fred Hayek (The Democratic Party is now the operational arm of the CPUSA)
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To: bert
οὗ μὲν γάρ με ἔδει κακοπαθεῖν τῷ σώματι μετὰ τῆς αἰτίας τῆς οὐ προσηκούσης, ἐνταυθοῖ οὐδέν με ὠφέλησεν ἡ ἐμπειρία: οὗ δέ με δεῖ σωθῆναι μετὰ τῆς ἀληθείας εἰπόντα τὰ γενόμενα, ἐν τούτῳ με βλάπτει ἡ τοῦ λέγειν ἀδυνασία.
112 posted on 04/18/2016 8:22:46 PM PDT by Yashcheritsiy (You can't have a constitution without a country to go with it)
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To: Fred Hayek
One has to know it as the ratios.

Well, there you are : science. The science of space, in this instance.

113 posted on 04/18/2016 9:07:13 PM PDT by dr_lew
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To: GenXteacher; KC_Lion

Thanks for the ping KC-Lion. One of my friends had the Oregon Trail game, I think in the 80s, and had told me how much he liked it. I wanna play!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oregon_Trail_(video_game)

Play classic game The Oregon Trail for free on your browser
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2015/01/08/oregon-trail-internet-archive/21450885


114 posted on 04/18/2016 10:24:17 PM PDT by beaversmom
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To: LoneStarGI

See this documentary footage on what you could have done to get your money back
Foolin’ Around (1980)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3saLfCXuDY0


115 posted on 04/18/2016 11:29:38 PM PDT by minnesota_bound
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To: dragonblustar

Abridged version of course.


116 posted on 04/19/2016 1:13:58 PM PDT by the scotsman
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To: Forward the Light Brigade
wait til our enemies knock out the Electrical Grid... reading trying to stay alive will be popular again.

The books in the libraries will be used by looters for cooking and warming fires.

But you do have an interesting, upper-class-Victorian vision of the Apocalypse.

117 posted on 04/19/2016 1:16:41 PM PDT by ChicagahAl (Socialism is the political version of AIDS. No Cure. Always Fatal. Contagious If Unprotected.)
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To: MarkL

Have you ever read the follow-ups to the trilogy? I’m blanking a bit on Titles (and too lazy to run downstairs and check) but the First Queen and Druid of Shannara books were pretty good, too.


118 posted on 04/19/2016 1:23:19 PM PDT by MortMan (Let's call the push for amnesty what it is: Pedrophilia.)
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To: daisy12

I never forgot devouring “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” in the third grade.


119 posted on 04/19/2016 1:23:32 PM PDT by Marathoner (Cruz or Lose 2016)
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To: daisy12

Extremely few college graduates could even write a short book. Illiteracy is rampant among college graduates.


120 posted on 04/19/2016 1:24:52 PM PDT by CodeToad (Islam should be banned and treated as a criminal enterprise!)
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