REACTION ESSAY 1

Federico Soto
June 16, 2014


College Lectures: Is Anybody
Listening?

College lectures: Is anybody listening? Is an essay that mainly talks about the situation in
the American schools regarding the reading techniques that are used and how the teachers give
their class. In consequence of that the author said, " teachers, it is charged, are not doing a good
job of teaching, and students are not doing a good job of learning." I agree with the author that
the way used by the teachers, is forcing the students to learn in a way that is more difficult for
them, and it should be the opposite. In order to get the attention of the students and for them to
learn more, teachers must start applying efficient techniques.

However the main idea of the reading is that most of the students are not paying attention
to their teacher while they teach their classes. Most of the teachers give their class as a lecture
while the students have to take notes and need to really concentrate, which was the technique
teachers used long time ago. Things had being changing by the pass of the years. However some
teachers keep using the techniques that were used in the past, instead of using new techniques
that could make a better understanding of the classes for the students. However reading
techniques are being more useful for the students, giving them the opportunity to take their time
while they are reading in order to get a better understanding of the same.







REACTION ESSAY 2

Yet another fact is that sometimes teachers may speak too fast making the students feel
lost.
Thats why active learning is better because they experiment and an instructor checks the work.
This is why I prefer to be more autosuficient; reading constantly and working on my own instead
of just listening to a teacher speak. As I said before, it is more comfortable and practical for us,
students, to learn through different methods and techniques and with that we can make the most
of ourselves.

In conclusion, I agree with the author in some ways, for example I personally dont like
listening to the teachers while they speak for a long time, somehow it makes me bored. However
some classes must include a little bit of everything like reading, presentations, speeches, etc.
Personally, I consider that reading and practicing are the most efficient techniques I have being
using, in order to improve my knowledge. So with that said, teachers lectures are very common
and commonly used but studies results tell us that the modern ways of teaching are better. As the
author said, After all, students must learn to listen before they can listen to learn.