Sunday, June 14, 2009

not answering the question



This has been a touchy topic these days in class. Many students, more than expected, answered something that was not what was asked in the "trabajo práctico". It is very important to know why, so that this does not happen again. To teach effectively, teachers need, among other things, to receive feedback from students about their progress and difficulties. You can tell teachers things they could not know: how you experience learning, and sometimes the reason for your problems.
That is why today the question is addressed to those who "didn´t answer the question" on this occasion or on any other: why did you write about something other than what was asked?
Mind you: we are not trying to find out if someone is to blame for this, or if you happen to regret what you did or did not do about your studies in the past. All we need to devote our attention to is the fact that there is a difficulty that needs to be resolved, so we are looking for the best way to do that. Understanding the reasons for the problem is the first step.

7 comments:

Ganesha said...

I, personally, misunderstood the quote. Instead of "era" I understood "aerea" and that gave rise to misinterpretation of what the writer wanted to say. Therefore, I never answered the question because I wrote about other thing. It was a stupid mistake but it spoiled my paper. Of course, I also had problems with language and I mixed ideas at times, but in the overall it seemed that the main mistake was misinterpretation.
I hope to do well next time.

A. F. Ch. said...

Hi bloggers!

Fortunately, I did not have problems with the "not answering the question" but my concerns are those of structure, grammar and some words. Thinking about the discussion, I saw that some of my partners had that difficulty and they did not know why they failed.

Sometimes it is not easy to realize how to answer the question because of lack of background info, not enough pre-reading, or just not being able to comprehend the topic entirely.

As some of our teachers said, if you do not understand the topic, look for other ways that allow you to search that trigger for its understanding. This means that if you do not see the point of a text immediately, resource to some other things at hand.

Other times it is even harder for example because of time, nervousness, and all those drawbacks that come up at the most inconvenient time for us.

See you all!

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

I don’t really know why so many people misunderstood the question of the first ‘trabajo práctico,’ but what I’m really conscious of is why I failed mine.
Once I finished my TP, I reread it and then I realized that I hadn’t answered the question at all. Unfortunately, there was no time for rewriting a whole essay again. (I know that this TP is not supposed to be an essay, but I couldn’t find a more appropriate word). I kept on thinking the whole week that I was going to fail my exam for not answering the question and, in the end, that was the problem.
The good thing about this is that now I know where I have to focus my attention. I have realised that I don’t have to waste time in writing things that are not related with the rubric at all.
Being aware of what is expected is fundamental, but this, of course, requires practice. I’m not trying to say that we need to write a hundred of essays. What we need is to exercise our minds, to reflect upon the topics we have been dealing with. For example, I have been trying to imagine possible questions that can be asked by the teachers. I feel that in this way, I will be more trained in answering questions about quotations and comparisons between texts.

JM said...

In my case, understanding the question was not "the problem", but rather waht to say about it and how to do it. The worry and concern of writing something appropriate and accurate confused me so much that I hardly remembered what it was necessary to write about. Analizing my exam and reasoning about what I had done, I can now realize that formulating my opinion and my knowledge about the task would have just been enough. And I also understand,now, that the complexity of a text does not guarantee its success at all.

giselee said...

In my case, I simply did not do the paper. I understood the assignment and everything, but i just felt that I would not be able to express myself in more than 150 words.
I think my problem was lack of vocabulary and some backround knowledge, in addition to a nervous breakdown. (jaja)
Hopefully next time I will be ready to undertake the paper.

Unknown said...

Hello everybody! I had this problem of "not answering the question" in a task given in class (about Helen Keller's essay). The teacher told me what I wrote was "correct" but it didn't answer the question. I kept thinking WHY I couldn't understand the task, and then why many other classmates couldn't also.(I felt really frustrated).In my case I think I got confussed with the second question,I couldn't see its clear relation with the first one ( I think the second question is kind of "redundant") so I understood that I had to write about what was the mystery for me. I mean, why is WHAT KIND and WHY included in the second question if this is already implied in SUCH a mystery? Sorry if I'm wrong, perhaps there's still something i'm not understanding.