Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Returning to my discussion of the first lecture session of my mechanics classes for the second week of classes, there was a Korean guy who raised his hand several times during the lecture, to tell me that there was a shortcut to the methods of computation I was discussing.

I told him to wait until I have discussed all the scenarios. When he did show his solution, it was only for one problem though. And, yes, it worked, but the level of comprehension needed to arrive at the conclusion of using that equation was something that I knew from experience the average student would resist and complain before they accept, if ever.

His solution involved understanding implicitly that if the speed of one of two vehicles is given and their distance apart is known after a certain number of hours traveling in the same direction from the same initial point, then dividing the distance by the number of hours and subtracting from the first (and higher) speed would yield the second speed.

Unfortunately, the guy did not speak English that well, so it was left to me to explain to his classmates how he arrived at the same answer.

What added to the awkwardness of the situation was that some of the students who took either Mathematical Methods 1 or Trigonometric Applications (or both) under me term were blowing the whole thing out of proportion by clamoring that the guy was challenging me, and that I not up to “defending” the methods I showed them.

After the class the guy approached me and asked if he could use his approach in solving the problems in the quiz. I said yes.

He did admit though that he had trouble analyzing the wording of the questions, and that he only worked at the computation in the examples after we had identified all the required quantities.

This would not be the first time I’ve heard of this though. I know that in Maila’s MM1 class during the first term, another Korean student who otherwise got high scores in her exams got a very low rating when it came to the word problems because he could not grasp the language well enough to it break down to the necessary quantities.

This guy though resolved to push his English studies further. Not that I could help him with that. My only recommendation for him was to appropriate a copy of the textbook and practice solving all the problems therein to widen his vocabulary of important terms.

In the first meeting for the second week of classes of by Advanced Math students, I tested their knowledge of matrix multiplication with around twenty board problems that they were assigned to solve even with their notes and handouts open in front of them, and help allowed from their other classmates.

At least with less than ten students for that subject (as well as Electromagnetic Theory) I could monitor dutifully their individual progress, before I proceed to the next lesson.

With that, I’ll have to stop here for now and resume next time. Class dismissed.