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Do Your Learners Roll Their Eyes When You State the Obvious?
By Richard Nantel | August 27, 2008
When it comes to music, the world appears to be divided into two types of people:
- People who hear the lyrics to a song
- Those that don’t hear the lyrics and instead hear only the melody, harmony, and arrangement
I’m definitely the latter type. After a first listen, I can usually pick up my guitar and play the song. But, I can listen to a song a dozen times without having a clue what it’s about. This leads to smirks around the dinner table when I say something like “did you ever notice there’s religious symbolism in Coldplay’s Viva la Vida?”
My daughters, on the other hand, have all the lyrics memorized after hearing a song a couple of times. I’m envious of their young nimble brains.
Being a strong believer in brain plasticity, the ability of our brains to adapt to new demands, I’ve decided to memorize the lyrics to one song per week. In preparation for this task, I Googled “How to memorize the lyrics to a song” to see if there were any tips to make this easier. A WikiHow article appeared as the first hit.
The article began by proposing the following:
“1. Pick the song you want to memorize. Obviously, it cannot be an instrumental song, because it has to have lyrics. It helps if it is a song you like and listen to all the time.”
I had planned to memorize the lyrics to some Beethoven string quartets. I’m glad I read this WikiHow article first. Sheesh.
Instructions like this are like the messages legal departments place on products so that their companies don’t get sued: “Unwrap gum before chewing” or “do not place your hands on the grill of the BBQ when cooking.”
Procedural instructions such as those in this WikiHow article probably make the learner lose faith in the value of the content. I hadn’t made it to step two and already felt this page was likely a waste of time.
Have you come across cringe-inducing obvious procedures in your training materials? I’d love to read them.
Topics: Learning |
August 27th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
What’s scariest to me about these sorts of instructions or warnings (Remove child from stroller before collapsing), is that more often than not, it’s because someone tried that and, finding undesirable results, probably sued the manufacturer (possibly just a myth?). I’m not sure if this is just an American phenomenon or a human one, but it signifies something very frightening to me.
The one that’s stuck with me most is a mother who left her child crawling around in the basement and the child knocked over a gas can. The gasoline ran down to their gas water heater and caused a fire in the basement. The child survived I believe, but the mother sued the gas can company because the gas can didn’t say “Warning, flammable contents.”
An interesting cultural difference - those sorts of signs/events aren’t nearly as rampant in New Zealand. Here, it’s very difficult to file a law suit. And if you win, it’s only for the necessary amount, not millions and millions. I believe this is a big factor that has led to more people accepting ownership for their mistakes, being more honest, and more trusting.
August 27th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Hi Richard,
To your point, I had a Volvo that displayed “messages”. It showed one message all the time that read, “You have no messages”.
August 28th, 2008 at 7:09 am
Gary,
My grandfather had one of the first “talking cars.” A woman’s voice would say things like “low fuel” when the gasoline level would drop below a certain point.
You’ve probably noticed that the check engine light of any car you’ve driven is on for a second when you first turn the key. This is some type of diagnostic. In granddad’s talking car, the woman’s voice would say “Check your engine” every time he went for a drive.
Consequently, he had the car in the shop all the time until he got fed up, sold it, and bought a non-talking car.
August 28th, 2008 at 7:11 am
Adam,
I noticed just last night that the detergent pellets we use in our dishwasher contain a message “Do not eat.” I guess to some, these looked like big, albeit soapy-tasting, candies.
August 28th, 2008 at 10:13 am
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