Communicating: The Students' Obligations A large portion of the modern educational environment involves the process of lecturing. Unfortunately, the relationship between the teacher and student in such environments suggests too strongly that the burden of the effort in this form of communication is on the teacher. Indeed, both students and teachers often sense the implied character of the relationship to the extent that each instinctively takes on a specific role; the teacher is expected to produce information and the student becomes the passive participant. Reading, writing, and speaking long have been recognized as important components in the educational process; listening has been largely ignored. Students tend to be poor listeners, which is an especially unfortunate characteristic for lectureoriented courses. Many students come to such courses obviously unprepared to listen; they bring the morning paper to read, write letters, work on an essay or on similar assignments for other courses, engage in conversation with their neighbors, or they fall asleep. Lecture time is often considered time for doing something else. Such behavior suggests that students do not believe listening is an active process that can be intellectually rewarding. Many students seem perfectly comfortable with the idea that tuition which they have paid guarantees them a seat in the class, and they seem prepared to fritter away the lecture hour; unfortunately their tuition doesn't guarantee that they will learn as they sit passively and/or distracted in that seat. The lecture environment can be improved in a number of subtle ways. Students in such courses need to understand that at least half of the responsibility for their success in a, lecture-oriented course is theirs; that half requires that they
learn to listen. Lecturers can help students learn to listen carefully by making the lecture material sufficiently important and/or stimulating to make them want to listen. Ohviously if students acquire the sense that the lecture subjects are taken verbatum from a textbook, it doesn't take much time before they begin to feel that the lecture hour is "free time". Those who want to accomplish something will attempt to use such lecture time for other purposes; the undisciplined will sleep or otherwise dally away the time. Thus, from the standpoint of content, the lecturer has an opportunity to help students learn tolisten; this is not tosuggest that anecdotes, stand-up comedy routines, and audio and/or visual aids need be overly used to try to attract students' attention and/or keep students' attention. The mark of a good lecturer is that helshe is able todevelop in the student a sense that the point of the lecture is critical or important to an understanding of the subject. Skillfull use of devices oi speech and organization become important in this regard; lecturing from a book is not such a device. I t might be useful to spend a few minutes to teach students skills designed to make their lecture time more meaningful with respect to learning chemistry. Many students need help in taking notes and some tips in this regard can lead to unsuspected benefits. Students not only need to learn to listen, they must also listen to learn. No teacher can make students listen; most teachers can help improve their ability to do so and, thus, increase the probability that leaning will occur, which, of JJL course, is the object of education.
Volume 65
Number 2
February 1988
95
