There is a common myth between many students. They will learn when they go for lectures. Notice that I mentioned the word 'go'. Asking many of the common JC students during my high school days, they all seem to think that going to lectures guarantees knowledge. I beg to differ.

In a lecture, there is a one-way transmission of information from the lecturer to the student. The lecturer can be considered as a constant. He has his own individual style that seldom changes. The student on the other hand is a variable. He can choose to adopt a passive learning attitude, or an active learning attitude. What is the difference you might ask?

Before we answer the question, let's do a quick analysis of how knowledge is gained. We can absorb content in two ways, either through our eyes by reading a book or looking at a screen, or by listening, in our case, listening to the lecturer. Once the content has entered our brains, we then have to process it with our minds, sort out the relevant knowledge in appropriate chunks to be stored. The final step is to use this new knowledge by studying examples and exercise. It is here where we assimilate the concepts and theories and at best, be masters in using it.

Okay, back to our lecture. We already know the lecturer is the constant so how much we learn depends on the variable of being passive or active. For the passive student, the learning stops after the first stage. Certainly, the content does enter the student's mind but he is caught in other affairs and so no content is processed into knowledge. It is these students who typically say, "I go to every lecture but don't gain anything".

For the active students, they absorb the content probably at the same rate as the passive students and then process it by thinking through the concepts and even question the validity of what is being taught. These students are the ones exiting the lecture hall feeling satisfied that they have learnt something.

Of course, be it passive or active students, no one should miss out the most important step - taking what you learn and practice it on questions. It is through such problem solving that the student questions the inner workings of what he has learnt and in doing so, mastered it.