November 14, 2025 | Up to date November 13, 2025
12 Widespread Causes College students Don’t Learn & What You Can Do About It
by Terry Heick
Why don’t college students learn extra?
Digital distractions? No books at dwelling? An excessive amount of testing? Kim Kardashian? It relies on the coed. It relies on illiteracy vs aliteracy. It relies on the way you outline studying (does studying long-winded character dialogues in Sq. Enix video games depend?) So beneath, I’ve gathered among the commonest causes college students don’t learn and offered some methods you may start to deal with that situation.
12 Widespread Causes College students Don’t Learn & What You Can Do About It
1. They haven’t discovered the best e book or sort of e book.
How do you’re feeling when your principal drops a e book in your lap–one thing well-intentioned however not even somewhat naturally fascinating to you? Do you hate to learn since you don’t need to learn it?
Attainable options: I inform my college students that once I stroll right into a bookstore of 10,000 books, 9200 of them don’t attraction to me. The upside? Which means there are 800 books I’m dying to learn. Nobody hates to learn. A few of us are simply pickier readers than others. We’ve received a group of books for students who think they don’t like reading, too.
See additionally What I Tell Students Who Think They Don’t Like To Read
2. They want common studying methods they will flip to every now and then.
Attainable options: See here.
Attainable options: ‘Market’ studying to them. Take footage of them studying. Begin a ‘Caught Studying’ class instagram feed or #caughtreading hashtag (ship it to me and I’ll tweet it). Deal with it with the identical creativity and keenness that advertising and marketing businesses efficiently market billion-dollar corporations.
3. They want particular studying methods they will self-select from primarily based on context.
Attainable options: Determine their strengths and areas for progress as a reader, assist them self-assess in the identical manner, then work along with them and their mother and father to create a set of 4-6 studying methods from the checklist above (or different) for them to make use of flexibly relying on what they’re studying.
4. Studying will be intimidating.
Studying is enjoyable–till it isn’t. Do I perceive it? What might be on the check? Am I at grade degree? Above? Beneath? What if I’ve to learn out loud?
Attainable options: Don’t make them learn out loud until what you’re eager to assess is oral fluency! Don’t put them on the spot. Don’t ask comprehension questions out loud. Don’t all the time insist that they ‘learn on grade degree’ (Really feel like studying Shakespeare after a protracted day, or would you reasonably go dwelling and plop on the sofa and watch ‘Bar Rescue’?)
5. The studying area or ‘vibe’ isn’t proper.
Too noisy. Too quiet. Too many distractions. Too heat, too chilly–all of us have circumstances we wish to learn in. I can’t learn if it’s not utterly quiet–anybody speaking and I’m achieved.
Attainable options: Permit college students to make use of white noise apps. Put white noise on within the classroom (they’ll get used to it). Create studying areas in your classroom. Ask your librarian/media specialist if they’ve any concepts. Flip the lights down. Purchase bean luggage–even for highschool college students!
6. They want a purpose to learn.
And also you assigning it isn’t sufficient.
Attainable options: Make studying social. The method, the reflections, and the outcomes. Assist them see the worth of each the method of studying (crucial pondering), and the outcomes of studying (information). Assist them see studying as a part of the connection between the life they’ve and the life they need to have.
7. They’ve an excessive amount of else to do.
It’s onerous to learn in case you have 1,000,000 issues to do. Who needs to “take pleasure in a superb e book” while you’ve received 20 pages of homework to do?
Attainable options: Assist them create a customized studying schedule that works for them primarily based on their life.
8. It’s not a behavior.
Studying is a muscle. The extra they learn, the extra they’ll need to learn.
Attainable options: They want an at-home library of ‘stuff’ they need to learn. Or the Epic reading app.
9. They’ve issues with phonemic consciousness.
In the event that they wrestle with phonemic consciousness, studying goes to be like climbing a mountain.
Attainable options: Apps can’t resolve each literacy downside, however they’re nice for follow. Listed below are some elementary reading apps that may assist. And a few apps for struggling readers.
10. They’ve a restricted sight phrase vocabulary.
Restricted sight phrase vocabulary means sluggish studying pace, which reduces comprehension and makes studying not enjoyable.
Attainable options: Use Knowji. Have enjoyable with Frayer Fashions. Play Vocab video games. However greater than the rest, assist them construct a way of momentum as readers. Encountering phrases in context is healthier than on an index card for long-term retention.
11. They wrestle with their very own identification as a ‘reader.’
These college students see studying as one thing that you just do in school, reasonably than a possibility to make that means, be entertained, be uncovered to new concepts, make mates, and so on. Somebody that engineers known as an engineer. Somebody that writes is a author. Somebody that reads? That’s known as a scholar.
12. They should know all the unimaginable issues about studying–matters, information, genres, authors, and so on.
Attainable Options: So present them.
12 Widespread Causes College students Don’t Learn & What You Can Do About It; picture attribution flickr person eugenekim
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