Read the text. Select the most appropriate statements that represent the notes or main ideas of the text.                 (7)

Attitudes to learning

Attitudes towards learning are important factors on the students’ levels of goal setting, problem solving abilities, their beliefs towards learning, their inner and external motivations in the process of learning and all the academic performances they perform. It has often been illustrated that controversial material is more readily learnt if it fits in with existing beliefs and attitudes. For example, pro-communist students learnt more readily a list of statements favourable to the U.S.S.R. (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) than anti-communist students.  That material is most easily learnt which conforms to existing opinions. The recall of controversial material may also be selective: for instance, theistic students remembered better than atheistic students, statements favourable to religion and vice versa. This suggests some resistance to learning and retaining materials which is not acceptable to us. Conversely, we are very ready to learn from certain sources to which we are favourably inclined, such as a political weekly or a particular author whose work we admire. Even in factual subjects, in which there may not seem to be much room for controversy, there may be parts of the subject which you regard as old-fashioned or dead wood. Once you begin to develop enthusiasm for certain approaches to your subject, as every active and spirited person does, it becomes rather too easy to dismiss other approaches as worth-less and not to bother to learn about them. The hard fact is, however, that if you have to cover a syllabus, you probably cannot afford to neglect any part of it because you think it is unimportant or because you don’t like the way it is taught.

Reference list:

Maddox, H. (1967). How to study. Pan Books.

Şenay Şen, H. (2013).  The attitudes of university students towards learning. Procedia – Social and Behavioural Sciences, 83, pp. 947-953.