When instructors assign readings to students, they generally assume that anyone who has done the reading must know the information in it and that if they don’t, they did not do the reading. In reality, students often have a hard time determining the main point of a reading or what they should get out of it because they lack the background knowledge that an expert brings to bear on a text. We have heard this from our students, who tell me that they can read a paragraph over and over again without understanding it or do not know what is important when taking notes.
