12 Causes College students Don’t Learn & What You Can Do About It
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 will depend on the scholar. It will depend on illiteracy vs aliteracy. It will depend 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 commonest causes college students don’t learn and supplied some methods you’ll be able to 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 correct guide or kind of guide.
How do you’re feeling when your principal drops a guide in your lap–one thing well-intentioned however not even a bit of naturally fascinating to you? Do you hate to learn since you don’t wish to learn it?
Doable 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 received a set of books for college students who suppose they don’t like studying, too.
See additionally What I Inform College students Who Assume They Don’t Like To Learn
2. They want basic studying methods they’ll flip to occasionally.
Doable options: See right here.
Doable options: ‘Market’ studying to them. Take photos 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 primarily based on context.
Doable options: Establish their strengths and areas for development as a reader, assist them self-assess in the identical means, 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 might be intimidating.
Studying is enjoyable–till it isn’t. Do I perceive it? What can be on the take a look at? Am I at grade degree? Above? Beneath? What if I’ve to learn out loud?
Doable 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 at all times insist that they ‘learn on grade degree’ (Really feel like studying Shakespeare after an extended day, or would you relatively 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.
Doable 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 motive to learn.
And also you assigning it isn’t sufficient.
Doable 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 (data). Assist them see studying as a part of the connection between the life they’ve and the life they wish to have.
7. They’ve an excessive amount of else to do.
It’s exhausting to learn you probably have one million issues to do. Who needs to “get pleasure from a very good guide” if you’ve received 20 pages of homework to do?
Doable options: Assist them create a personalised 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 wish to learn.
Doable options: They want an at-home library of ‘stuff’ they wish 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.
Doable options: Apps can’t clear up each literacy downside, however they’re nice for observe. 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.
Doable options: Use Knowji. Have enjoyable with Frayer Fashions. Play Vocab video games. However greater than anything, assist them construct a way of momentum as readers. Encountering phrases in context is best than on an index card for long-term retention.
11. They battle with their very own id as a ‘reader.’
These college students see studying as one thing that you just do at college, relatively than a chance to make which means, be entertained, be uncovered to new concepts, make buddies, and so forth. 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 the entire unimaginable issues about studying–matters, data, genres, authors, and so forth.
Doable Options: So present them.
12 Widespread Causes College students Don’t Learn & What You Can Do About It; picture attribution flickr person eugenekim
