The author of this article
Song Shaowei is an expert in adolescent learning psychology and the executive director of the Learning Science Laboratory of the Department of Psychology at Tsinghua University.
Case background
During a practice session during the general review period for the senior year of high school, Pengfei did not write a single word in the last two major questions worth more than ten points in the physics paper. The head teacher asked him why, and he said he wouldn't do it at all.
This exam severely damaged Pengfei's self-confidence, and even made him tired of studying and no longer wanted to take physics classes. Later, after being introduced by the class teacher, Pengfei came to my studio to seek help.
Initial consultation reception
Since Pengfei’s treatment purpose and entry point are very clear, we briefly introduced each other and went straight to the topic.
Pengfei took out this physics test paper and let me refer to it. Judging from the entire paper, except for the two blank questions, has a relatively high accuracy rate for other questions. I first calmed Pengfei's emotions and guided him to use a growth mindset to deal with the failure in front of him. "All the problems that arise now are to help us better cope with the college entrance examination! " I hope he can view it more positively this examination.
Then, Pengfei and I recalled the process of taking the physics exam together.
Picture source: pexls
"I did the previous questions very smoothly. I became more and more relaxed as I did it. I also had a feeling that I would get a good score in the exam this time. I even distracted a little and thought about the college entrance examination. I felt that I should be quite confident in the college entrance examination physics. "
Pengfei looked down at the desktop in front of him and recalled.
"Zhang Xiaoyi is sitting next to me, and he is a top student in physics. During the exam, he did it faster than me. When he turned to the big questions on the back, I heard him sigh. At that time, I thought that the big questions would be very difficult. . Later, when I finished this part, I found that it was really difficult and I couldn’t understand the questions. “
” “Yeah.” I nodded and encouraged him to continue.
"I tried to do the first big question, but I couldn't find the idea at all. I wasted about ten minutes. Then I decided to give up on this question and quickly did the next one, but the result was also wrong." Pengfei He said with a frown.
"Pengfei, do you still remember how much time is left when you finish the next big question?"
"Almost 40 minutes."
"Then what efforts have you made in these 40 minutes?"
"It's just in the draft. I tried to solve the questions on paper, but I knew I might not be able to do it, so I didn’t write it on the test paper. I wrote “
” on the scratch paper. No wonder the test paper was blank. The whole process of trying to solve the questions was on the scratch paper. ? "
" Yes. "
Preliminary analysis of
Pengfei's physical foundation is not a big problem. I guess he was intimidated by these two questions that seemed like he didn't know where to start. During a stressful exam, some students read the question once but couldn't figure it out. They quickly concluded that the question was too difficult and they couldn't do it themselves, and they were trapped in a fear of difficulty. This kind of negative thinking will prevent them from further normal thinking, causing them to easily give up on problems that they have a chance to solve.
Of course, Pengfei had no idea when answering these two big questions. It is very likely that he lacked the ability to reason and process the known information when facing complex problems. But judging from Pengfei's memories and expressions, his problems in value decision-making also had a great impact. Because his fear and lack of confidence were not adjusted in time at that time, Pengfei was greatly hindered in his logical reasoning. At the same time, Pengfei's calculation process was all written on scratch paper, resulting in a completely blank paper, and he could not get any points for the problem-solving process, which also reflected his shortcomings in test-taking strategies.
Picture source: pexls
Treatment process
In order to help Pengfei build the awareness and resilience to construct logical channels when facing difficulties, I decided to find an entry point on Pengfei’s points of interest and experience it together.
"Pengfei, let's put down the test paper first and let's chat. What are your usual hobbies?"
"Well, I like listening to music and watching movies."
"Okay, tell me, which movies are your favorite?" Like? "I also like movies, and movies have great carrying capacity and can be a good entry point.
"It's science fiction! For example, the "Harry Potter" series. I like every movie very much. I have watched some of them several times!" When talking about his favorite movies, Pengfei's frown temporarily relaxed. Come on, your eyes lit up.
"In the magical world, which character is your favorite?" I continued to ask.
"I like many characters in it, such as Harry, Professor Snape, and Sirius."
...
"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" movie poster
and Pengfei chatted a few words In the plot of the movie, seeing that his enthusiasm has been fully mobilized, I decided to look for a suitable example in "Harry Potter".
"There are many wonderful stories that happened in Hogwarts. For example, in "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", Professor Snape's magic potion lesson impressed me deeply. Do you still remember this lesson? Potion puzzle?" I showed Pengfei the text and pictures of this question I found on my phone.
"Of course I remember! But I really didn't think about it carefully when I was reading the book." Pengfei seemed a little eager to try and read the topic carefully.
There is a row of seven potion bottles on the table in the picture, and there is a paper scroll beside it. The scroll contains the puzzle about this row of potions:
"Then let's deduce it together. The contents of these seven bottles are all What is it? Pengfei, what are your thoughts now? "I'll strike while the iron is hot."
"Teacher Song, just tell me the reasoning method!" Pengfei said anxiously.
I smiled. Seeing that Pengfei was very enthusiastic, he obviously understood the reason why I asked him this question, so he guided me and said: "Then we will simply do it in two steps. The first step is to solve this problem." The seven bottles are numbered ① to ⑦ from left to right. The second step is to find the known connections and deduce them step by step. "
Pengfei listened to my words and quickly copied and deduced on the white paper. Every time Pengfei makes a correct reasoning, I will nod slightly or express my affirmation with my eyes or words. This question has a lot of background information, but the actual derivation of the relationship between the conditions is not complicated. Within a few minutes, Pengfei completed this interesting reasoning:
"Perfect!" Pengfei smiled in victory, "This The question is much simpler than that of high school physics, just follow it step by step. "
" Right, from the known conditions to the solution goal, it is originally a dark passage, but as long as we sort out the known conditions and find the correlation, And by reasoning step by step, you can definitely find the correct and effective logical channel. Do you think the logic behind a complex physics problem is the same? "Teacher, I understand it right away." Try the two questions that stumped me again." As if he had an epiphany, Pengfei opened the physics paper again and started drawing, writing and then hesitantly stopping.
"Is it difficult?"
"Yes! I worked for 40 minutes during the exam and I couldn't do it at all. I can't do it at all!"
"If I say you can do it, do you believe it?"
"..."
"Well, you take a piece of white paper and do what I ask. I will ask you some questions, and you just answer me directly."
Next, I asked Pengfei to read the question stem of the first big question, list all the known conditions, and then use these known conditions to guess what principles the questioner might want to test. Although he was a little confused, Pengfei still wrote out the principles and formulas he could think of with my encouragement. Then I asked Pengfei to compare the known conditions and principle formulas to see what intermediate variables were missing. To solve the problem, you only need to know the conditions to get the result.
Pengfei gently turned the ballpoint pen in his hand and started thinking and trying again. Suddenly he shouted: "Teacher Song, I can do it!" "
I smiled and nodded, watching him first push forward one step backward, and then push forward two steps, and finally opened up the logical passage of the question and successfully solved this big question.
"Perfect!" I encouraged happily.
Review and Summary There are many seemingly difficult questions in the
exam. In fact, they are just some modifications on the basic question types, such as turning a known thing into an unknown that needs to be solved, thus increasing a certain degree of difficulty. , but the content does not exceed the knowledge outline. If you do not find the solution to the problem the first time, then the correct response strategy should be to first deal with your own emotional changes and tell yourself that this situation is a normal phenomenon in the exam. , then start the secondary problem-solving program and enter the standard problem-solving steps: list the known, guess the principles, and build logical channels.
Among them, establishing logical channels is the key to solving problems if students can often consciously practice simple problems. Summarize the commonly used "logical channels" for solving problems. When encountering a problem, you can flexibly call and nest these "channel" reserves, search for the required conditions and reason about intermediate quantities in a targeted manner, and then open up the "channel" of the problem. Many complex problems will be solved easily.
Pengfei's physical foundation is actually not bad. The reason why he "passed the blanks" on the two big questions is because he lacks the persistence and practicality to solve the problems twice, and his emotions He was stuck in the trouble of failing to solve the problem for the first time, and the value decision failed to help him make the correct response, so that he could not complete the correct logical channel construction.
Therefore, I chose a haha based on his interest in watching movies. The interesting reasoning on the theme of Lipote's magic not only mobilizes Pengfei's enthusiasm and relaxes his mentality, but also allows Pengfei to go through the process of building a "logical channel". At this time, he looks back at the two steps he had done before. The big physics question that I gave up.
Since the negative emotions were effectively dealt with, Pengfei calmed down and followed the steps to construct the logical channel, and straightened out the relationship between the known conditions, principle formulas and solution goals step by step, and finally completed it successfully. Understand the questions.
Picture source: pexls
In fact, many people mistakenly think that a top student can do any question!
I remember that when I was taking the college entrance examination, I often encountered questions that seemed difficult at first, but I would not give up. Maintain a psychological self-suggestion, that is, the feeling of solving difficult problems is coming again. This is how I tried last time, and finally made it!
Then, I will standardize the known conditions (the questions I can do are just No need to list); then guess the available principles based on the known conditions, and list the formulas; then use the principle formulas to combine and connect the known conditions, and you can build a logical channel for solving the problem step by step. Therefore, when you feel you have no ideas for a big question or difficult problem, don't just leave it blank, but write down the known conditions and formulas step by step, and complete the logical channel construction process on this basis.
Of course, there is another important factor behind this, and that is the memory of the human brain - there are actually very few working memory units, only 7±2. Therefore, it is difficult for the human brain to complete logical thinking on difficult problems without the aid of writing.
When we list the known information that needs to be remembered and the formulas and principles that need to be thought of, we can greatly reduce the intensity requirements for brain work, especially logical reasoning, and our problem-solving abilities will be greatly improved.Even if you fail to find the correct answer in the end, you have at least completed many steps of the problem-solving process and can get a considerable part of the process points. This in itself is also a correct test-taking strategy.
Notes to highlight the difficulty of
problems, the key lies in logical reasoning! Each additional step in the reasoning process will increase the difficulty of the question by even more than one point. To improve the ability to solve difficult problems, students must learn to deduce and construct logical channels based on known conditions, principle formulas and solution goals.
Author: Song Shaowei
Source: "Notes on Learning and Treatment"
Some pictures are from the Internet
Copyright belongs to the original author
Editor: Zhang Runxin
The reproduced content only represents the author's opinion
does not represent the position of the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
If you need to reprint, please contact the original Public account
Source: Origin Reading
Editor: Muyu
