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 rely?) So under, I’ve gathered among the most typical causes college students don’t learn and supplied some methods you’ll be able to start to deal with that concern.
12 Widespread Causes College students Don’t Learn & What You Can Do About It
1. They haven’t discovered the correct e-book or kind 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 a little bit naturally fascinating to you? Do you hate to learn since you don’t need to learn it?
Potential options: I inform my college students that after I stroll right into a bookstore of 10,000 books, 9200 of them don’t attraction to me. The upside? Meaning 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 obtained a group of books for college kids who suppose they don’t like studying, too.
See additionally What I Inform College students Who Suppose They Don’t Like To Learn
2. They want basic studying methods they’ll flip to now and again.
Potential options: See right here.
Potential 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 businesses efficiently market billion-dollar corporations.
3. They want particular studying methods they’ll self-select from based mostly on context.
Potential options: Establish 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 record above (or different) for them to make use of flexibly relying on what they’re studying.
4. Studying could be intimidating.
Studying is enjoyable–till it isn’t. Do I perceive it? What will probably be on the check? Am I at grade stage? Above? Beneath? What if I’ve to learn out loud?
Potential options: Don’t make them learn out loud except 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 at all times insist that they ‘learn on grade stage’ (Really feel like studying Shakespeare after a protracted day, or would you quite 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 fully quiet–anybody speaking and I’m executed.
Potential options: Enable 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 baggage–even for highschool college students!
6. They want a cause to learn.
And also you assigning it isn’t sufficient.
Potential options: Make studying social. The method, the reflections, and the outcomes. Assist them see the worth of each the method of studying (vital considering), and the outcomes of studying (data). 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 arduous to learn in case you have one million issues to do. Who desires to “take pleasure in a superb e-book” while you’ve obtained 20 pages of homework to do?
Potential options: Assist them create a customized studying schedule that works for them based mostly on their life.
8. It’s not a behavior.
Studying is a muscle. The extra they learn, the extra they’ll need to learn.
Potential options: They want an at-home library of ‘stuff’ they need to learn. Or the Epic studying app.
9. They’ve issues with phonemic consciousness.
In the event that they battle with phonemic consciousness, studying goes to be like climbing a mountain.
Potential options: Apps can’t remedy each literacy downside, however they’re nice for follow. Listed here are some elementary studying apps that may assist. And a few apps for struggling readers.
10. They’ve a restricted sight phrase vocabulary.
Restricted sight phrase vocabulary means gradual studying velocity, which reduces comprehension and makes studying not enjoyable.
Potential 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 battle with their very own identification as a ‘reader.’
These college students see studying as one thing that you just do at college, quite than a chance to make which means, be entertained, be uncovered to new concepts, make mates, and so forth. Somebody that engineers is named an engineer. Somebody that writes is a author. Somebody that reads? That’s referred to as a pupil.
12. They should know the entire unimaginable issues about studying–subjects, data, genres, authors, and so forth.
Potential Options: So present them.
12 Widespread Causes College students Don’t Learn & What You Can Do About It; picture attribution flickr consumer eugenekim
