Sarah VanPolen

James VanderMey

ENG 111

1/22/17

In Robert Leamnsons article Todays First-Year Students, from Thinking about

Teaching and Learning: Devolving Habits of Learning with First Year College Students and

University Students in 1999, Leamnson challenges faculty members to fine tune a strong signal

of communication to the oncoming freshmen, language, something that seems so simple is

becoming so distance between students and faculty. Leamnson presents the challenge to

refraining from the assumption that what is obvious to us, again through familiarity, might be

completely obscure to students (76). The word study, it has taken on two meanings, to the

freshmen it suggests reviewing the material the night before in order to pass the test. As for

faculty it is simply to strengthen the connections of the material in order to conquer classes.

Leamnson concludes that the kind of misunderstanding precipitated by the word study is in fact

a generic problem (77).

As faculty of college freshmen, do not hold your students within a classroom speaking a

foreign language. If students impose private meanings on words, what resonates might be

wildly at odds with what we intended (77). Discovering ways to broaden the communication

with students is an obligation that faculty must hold up to. Eliminating the language barrier

within the freshman classrooms will enhance the freshman education.

 Work Cited: Leamnson, Robert. Thinking about Teaching and Learning: Devolving

Habits of Learning with First Year College Students and University Students. Sterling, Virginia:

Stylus, 1999.