Just Listen

Here is what a student who joins Sophicly can use from the first week. There is a structured programme that sets out what to learn and in what order, and there are model answers for the questions they will sit. There are live lessons, practically unlimited exercises, and a library of the techniques that writers use. Marking and planning tools give detailed feedback on every essay, a dashboard tracks their progress, reports arrive the moment they finish marking a piece, and emails and text messages remind them what is due.

However, every year some of those students do not turn up to lessons. Some argue that they know a better way. Some skip a lesson, do part of the work, and mark it complete although they know it is not finished. Years ago, before most of those resources existed, we taught students who went on to score 7s, 8s and 9s. They had far less help than students have today. So what did they have that some students now do not?

In our view, the answer fits in two words. If we threw every resource away and gave a student one instruction, “Just listen”, that student could reach the grade they want. Listening is the biggest problem we see, and it matters more than any resource we could add. That is a strong claim, so we looked at what research says about it.

Listening means doing what was asked

Ask a student whether they listen and they will usually say yes, because they heard every word. But in a lesson, listening is something you can see. A student who has listened turns up, does the step in the way it was taught, finishes it before moving on, and changes their next piece of writing because of the feedback on the last one.

Each of the problems above is a different way of not doing that. The research on each one is worth knowing, because it shows the problem is common and that it costs grades.

Turning up is the first instruction

The simplest instruction in any course is to come to the lesson. In England, the Department for Education compared attendance with GCSE results for every pupil who sat their exams in 2019. Of the pupils who missed no school at all in Years 10 and 11, 83.7% got a grade 4 or above in both English and maths. Of the pupils who missed one day in ten or more, 35.6% did.^[1]

A review of 69 studies of university students found the same pattern. Turning up to class told the researchers more about a student’s grades than anything else they had measured, including entrance test scores, earlier grades and study habits.^[2] Neither study proves that missing lessons caused the lower grades, because the students who miss lessons are often different in other ways too. However, the same review found something that matters for this article. When universities made attendance compulsory, grades rose only a little.^[2] Being made to turn up helped far less than choosing to. Turning up has to be the student’s own decision.

Ticking the box

Marking a lesson complete before it is finished can feel harmless. The work is mostly done, and the tick makes the dashboard look better. Researchers have studied this habit in learning software for over twenty years, and they call it “gaming the system”: moving forward through a course by taking advantage of how the software works, instead of doing the thinking it asks for.^[3]

In one of the first studies, Ryan Baker and his colleagues watched 70 maths students aged about twelve to fourteen working through a computer course. About one student in four took shortcuts at least once. Of every kind of off-task behaviour the researchers recorded, including chatting and sitting idle, shortcuts were the only one linked to lower results on the final test. The eight students who took the most shortcuts scored 44% on that test, while the students who never took them scored 78%.^[3]

The study was small, so we take only the general point from it. A tick shows that a box was clicked, and nothing more. The skill is in the thinking that the box was supposed to stand for, so a student who skips the thinking has skipped the part that raises the grade.

The researchers noticed something else. Many of the students who took shortcuts were the ones who knew least at the start, and the authors thought they were more likely stuck than lazy.^[3] That is why “just listen” includes one more instruction: if you are stuck, say so. A stuck student who asks can be helped. A stuck student who ticks the box looks finished, so nobody knows they need help.

“I know a better way”

Some students do turn up and do the work, but they do it their own way. They write the paragraph in their usual order, or they skip the planning because they would rather start writing. They are not being rude. They believe their way works better for them.

Research suggests that this feeling is often wrong. At Harvard, Louis Deslauriers and his colleagues taught the same physics content to 149 students in two ways. In some lessons the students worked through problems themselves, and in others they listened to a polished lecture. The students learned more from the active lessons and scored clearly higher on the test. However, they felt they had learned less, and they rated the lecture as the better lesson.^[4] The extra effort of the active lessons felt like a sign that they were not learning, when it was the reason they were.

A review of how people manage their own learning reached the same conclusion: people often have “a faulty mental model of how they learn”, so they choose and judge their methods badly.^[5] Another study asked students how they planned to revise. They knew which strategies worked and planned to start early, yet they still crammed in the last day or two before the exam, with the weaker methods.^[6]

So “I know a better way” usually means “this way feels easier”. When you are asked to work in a way that feels slower or harder, that is often the method doing its job.

There is a fair exception. Research on what is called expertise reversal shows that a student who already knows a topic well can be slowed down by guidance written for a beginner.^[7] So a strong student may sometimes be right. But the way to find out is to ask the teacher why the method is set up the way it is, then follow it while you wait for the answer. Quietly doing it your own way tells nobody anything.

More resources do not fix it

When some students do not listen, the natural answer is to add more help: another reminder, another video, another report. We do this all the time. Every week we add new features, new resources and new checks. However, the research suggests that resources on their own do not change what a student does.

The clearest example comes from free online courses. Harvard and MIT put hundreds of their courses online, free to anyone. Researchers looked at 12.67 million sign-ups over six years. About half of the people who signed up never opened the course, and in the last year studied, about three people in a hundred finished it.^[8] The material was excellent, and it cost nothing. However, excellent material did not make people use it.

There is a second finding in that study. Among people who paid for their course, 46% finished.^[8] Commitment made a large difference. Even so, more than half of the paying learners did not finish. Paying for the help, or having it available, is not the same as following it.

What “just listen” looks like

Put together, the research and our own experience point to a short list. None of it needs a new resource. It needs a decision.

• Turn up. Come to every lesson you are booked into, on time and ready to write.
• Do each step the way it is taught. If the lesson asks you to plan before you write, plan first, even when you would rather start writing.
• Finish before you tick. Mark a lesson complete only when every part of it is done.
• Use the feedback. Find the comment on your last essay and change the next essay because of it.
• Ask when you do not understand. Feedback often fails because students do not understand the words in it or do not know how to act on it.^[9] Ask what a comment means. Asking is part of listening.

The students we remember scoring 7s, 8s and 9s with far less help did these things. They were not always the most confident writers when they started. They turned up, they did what was asked, and they asked when they were stuck.

For parents

A parent cannot listen for their child. However, a parent can make listening easier. Ask whether your child went to the lesson. Ask to see the comment on their last essay and the sentence they changed because of it. When your child says they know a better way, encourage them to ask the teacher why the method is set up the way it is, and to follow it in the meantime. In Who Is Responsible? we explain why the most useful thing a parent can do is support the teaching. If a method puzzles you, ask us why, and we will explain it.

Five things to do this week

1. Go to every lesson you are booked into. If you cannot attend, tell us before the lesson, not after it.

2. Open one unfinished lesson and finish it properly. If you ticked it complete before it was done, go back and do the missing part.

3. Find the last comment on your writing. Write one sentence in your next essay that does what the comment asked.

4. Follow the method for one week without changing it. If you think it is wrong, write down your reason and ask your teacher about it, but follow the method while you wait for the answer.

5. Ask one question. If a comment, a word or a step does not make sense, ask about it this week.

If you would like to know where your writing stands today, our free assessmenttakes five minutes.

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