IELTS Listening: Notes Completion: Einstein’s Struggles

In class we usually collect our notes under headings to organize them and help us understand the information. But that information doesn’t always come in the correct order. We might need to put a few notes under the first heading, then go on to another category of notes, and then later return to the first to write down more notes.

Here is a story from Newsbeat (via Audioboom). It’s about how kids do better in science class when they not only learn about the achievements of great scientists but also learn about the personal and academic struggles of those scientists.

The answers to the questions below come in the order that you’ll hear them in the recording, but the questions might jump around a bit on the answer sheet.

Complete the notes below, using ONE WORD ONLY

Einstein’s Problems

• change (1) ______ many times
• difficulty convincing other scientists of his ideas
• (5) ______ Germany in WW2 to avoid (6) ______

Marie Curie’s Problems

• study in (7) ______
• women (8) ______ from  attending universities

First Study Group

• read an (2) ______ from a course book
• passage about (3) ______ of famous scientists
• got (13) ______ results than 2 other groups
• thought famous scientists were naturally (14) ______

Second Study Group

• read about private (4)______ of famous scientists

Third Study Group

• read about scientists’ academic problems
• saw how they (9) ______ those problems

Results

• second/third groups not only got better (10) ______  in, but also more (11) ______ for science
• worst students made biggest (12) ______

Answers, transcript and clues below the image

1. school
2. excerpt
3. accomplishments
4. struggles
5. flee
6. persecution
7. secret
8. discouraged
9. confronted
10. grades
11. motivation
12. gains
13. worse
14. gifted

Teens do better in Science when they know Einstein and Curie also Struggled

Apparently learning that science does not always come naturally—even to geniuses—helps children succeed.

Students who learned that great scientists struggled, both personally and intellectually, outperformed those who learned only of the scientists’ great achievements, new research shows.

Ninth- and 10th-grade students in low-performing New York City schools who read about Albert Einstein’s struggles, including multiple school changes and trouble convincing others that gravity from a large object like a planet could actually bend light, performed better in science than a control group who learned only about what the scientists achieved.

The study, published in the Journal of Educational Psychology, divided 402 ninth- and 10th-graders from four New York City public schools in Harlem and the Bronx into three groups.

One group read an 800-word excerpt from a scientific textbook on the accomplishments of Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, and Michael Faraday (an English scientist who made discoveries about electromagnetism).

Another group learned about the scientists’ personal struggles, such as the fact that Einstein had to flee Nazi Germany to avoid persecution, or Marie Curie had to study in secret because women were discouraged from academic pursuits at the time.

The third group learned about the scientists’ intellectual struggles and how they confronted them.

After six weeks, the two groups who learned about how the scientists struggled significantly improved their science grades and increased their motivation to study science. The lowest performing students showed the greatest gains.

Meanwhile, the students who learned only about the scientists’ achievements performed worse. They believed the scientists were innately gifted—unlike themselves.

The study underpins a few key findings from the science of learning:

Some people learn better when the content has meaning to them. For those students, science comes to life more through personal stories than through the actual scientific content.