Reality check: reading comprehension

[marshwiggle]

Adding words can clarify or obfuscate. Adding context can clarify or (if irrelevant) obfuscate. It's easy to blame comprehension difficulties on students when in fact the people setting the questions have failed to do their bit of writing comprehension first.

As someone who regularly adds extra information to the words problems in my science courses, I would like to point out that the real world does not come with limited (selected) information available. Rather, it is relevant to require students to identify which pieces of information are important to solve the problem at hand. Some may call this obfuscation. I call it practical training.

I actually point out to students the value in having problems with extraneous information included, to prevent them blindly trying to come up with a formula that seems to require all of the given information. However, that still has limits. Typically one or two extra quantities are specified beyond the 3 or 4 required. The more unnecessary information provided, the more time and effort is going to be required just whittling down the problem, rather than solving it. It's going to be more of a test of that ability than a test of the ability to apply the appropriate principles to solve the problem. (That's great at a point where those principles should be well-internalized; before that point it's going to be mostly confusing.)

[ergative]

Adding words can clarify or obfuscate. Adding context can clarify or (if irrelevant) obfuscate. It's easy to blame comprehension difficulties on students when in fact the people setting the questions have failed to do their bit of writing comprehension first.

As someone who regularly adds extra information to the words problems in my science courses, I would like to point out that the real world does not come with limited (selected) information available. Rather, it is relevant to require students to identify which pieces of information are important to solve the problem at hand. Some may call this obfuscation. I call it practical training.

I actually point out to students the value in having problems with extraneous information included, to prevent them blindly trying to come up with a formula that seems to require all of the given information. However, that still has limits. Typically one or two extra quantities are specified beyond the 3 or 4 required. The more unnecessary information provided, the more time and effort is going to be required just whittling down the problem, rather than solving it. It's going to be more of a test of that ability than a test of the ability to apply the appropriate principles to solve the problem. (That's great at a point where those principles should be well-internalized; before that point it's going to be mostly confusing.)

I feel like some interthreaduality is approaching, regarding whether we should take points off when students throw extra cruft into their answers alongside the correct stuff.

[arcturus]

Adding words can clarify or obfuscate. Adding context can clarify or (if irrelevant) obfuscate. It's easy to blame comprehension difficulties on students when in fact the people setting the questions have failed to do their bit of writing comprehension first.

As someone who regularly adds extra information to the word problems in my science courses, I would like to point out that the real world does not come with limited (selected) information available. Rather, it is relevant to require students to identify which pieces of information are important to solve the problem at hand. Some may call this obfuscation. I call it practical training.

I actually point out to students the value in having problems with extraneous information included, to prevent them blindly trying to come up with a formula that seems to require all of the given information. However, that still has limits. Typically one or two extra quantities are specified beyond the 3 or 4 required. The more unnecessary information provided, the more time and effort is going to be required just whittling down the problem, rather than solving it. It's going to be more of a test of that ability than a test of the ability to apply the appropriate principles to solve the problem. (That's great at a point where those principles should be well-internalized; before that point it's going to be mostly confusing.)

I feel like some interthreaduality is approaching, regarding whether we should take points off when students throw extra cruft into their answers alongside the correct stuff.

To be fair, I usually include extraneous information that can provide context for the problem at hand. For example, if you are calculating orbits for satellites, it does not actually matter whether it is a telecommunications satellite (Starlink, OneWeb, etc) or a space telescope (Hubble) in regards to the general concept, but it certainly does matter to the people who launch it! Similarly, the exact size and mass of the satellite is negligible for these orbit calculation problems (assuming that the satellite is a typical satellite) but is very important for the actual launch logistics. Nonetheless, students do sometimes ask how they should use the information that it is an x-ray telescope, or optical/infrared telescope, in their answer to the problem.