Implications for the Classroom

To Help Student Comprehension, Provide Examples and Ask Students to Compare Them

As noted earlier, experience helps students to see deep structure, so provide that experience via lots of examples. Another strategy that might help (although it has not been tested extensively) is to ask students to compare different examples. Thus an English teacher trying to help her students understand the concept of irony might provide the following examples:

• In Oedipus Rex, the Delphic Oracle predicts that Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother. Oedipus leaves his home in an effort to protect those he believes to be his parents, but thus sets in motion events that eventually make the prediction come true.
• In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo kills himself because he believes that Juliet is dead. When Juliet awakens, she is so distraught over Romeo' s death that she commits suicide.
• In Othello, the noble Othello implicitly trusts his advisor Iago when he tells him that his wife is unfaithful, whereas it is Iago who plots against him.

The students (with some prompting) might come to see what each example has in common with the others. A character does something expecting one result, but the opposite happens because the character is missing a crucial piece of information: Oedipus is adopted, Juliet is alive, Iago is a deceiver. The audience knows that missing piece of information and therefore recognizes what the outcome will be. The outcome of each play is even more tragic because as the audience watch the events unfold, they know that the unhappy ending could be avoided if the character knew what they know. Dramatic irony is an abstract idea that is difficult to understand, but comparing diverse examples of it may help students by forcing them to think about deep structure. Students know that the point of the exercise is not shallow comparisons such as, "Each play has men and women in it." As discussed in Chapter Two, we remember what we think about. This method of getting students to think about deep structure may help.

Make Deep Knowledge the Spoken and Unspoken Emphasis

You very likely let your students know that you expect them to learn what things mean—that is, the deep structure. You should also ask yourself whether you send unspoken messages that match that emphasis. What kind of questions do you pose in class? Some teachers pose mostly factual questions, often in a rapid-fire manner: "What does b stand for in this formula?" or "What happens when Huck and Jim get back on the raft?" The low-level facts are important, as I've discussed, but if that' s all you ask about, it sends a message to students that that' s all there is.

Assignments and assessments are another source of implicit messages about what is important. When a project is assigned, does it demand deep understanding or is it possible to complete it with just a surface knowledge of the material? If your students are old enough that they take quizzes and tests, be sure these test deep knowledge. Students draw a strong implicit message from the content of tests: if it' s on the test, it' s important.

Make Your Expectations for Deep Knowledge Realistic

Although deep knowledge is your goal, you should be clear-eyed about what students can achieve, and about how quickly they can achieve it. Deep knowledge is hard-won and is the product of much practice. Don't despair if your students don't yet have a deep understanding of a complex topic. Shallow knowledge is much better than no knowledge at all, and shallow knowledge is a natural step on the way to deeper knowledge. It may be years before your students develop a truly deep understanding, and the best that any teacher can do is to start them down that road, or continue their progress at a good pace.

In this chapter I've described why abstract ideas are so difficult to understand, and why they are so difficult to apply in unfamiliar situations. I said that practice in thinking about and using an abstract idea is critical to being able to apply it. In the next chapter I talk at greater length about the importance of practice.