With the semester winding down today and winter break fast approaching, freshmen will soon have a chance to reflect back on their first semester at Tufts. Many are enrolled in large introductory courses, the detrimental sizes of which are supposedly compensated by accompanying recitations.
But according to many students interviewed, recitations are often unhelpful. This finding is echoed by a 2003 study on undergraduate education published in Science Magazine, which found that traditional lectures and recitations are "relatively ineffective" in developing the creative problem-solving skills that post-college employers require.
Many students expressed frustration that their teaching assistants were not very organized.
"I had three classes this semester that required recitations, but I felt that two out of the three were unorganized and didn't help me learn the material," freshman Jennifer Bollenbacher said. "One TA even confused my understanding of the material more."
In contrast, Bollenbacher said one of her other recitations was not a total flop.
"My recitation for Intro to Child Development was really organized and helped me a lot by discussing what was lectured on in class," she said. "My TA had already taught that recitation before, so she was a lot more organized and was able to help the other teaching assistants."
According to French Lecturer Anne-Christine Rice, recitations are valuable for foreign language practice.
"Recitations give students a chance to practice their language skills in a smaller environment knowing they will not be graded," Rice said in an e-mail. "Also, since they are taught by instructors who are just slightly older than the students, it may be less intimidating than speaking in class."
Rice explained that recitations also offer an up-to-the-minute discussion of foreign issues that a textbook can't provide. "I also believe that our students can use their recitation leader as a resource for current society issues, ideas [and] trends," she said.
French recitation leader Pascal Douglas, a Tufts graduate student who attended the University of Sorbonne in France, said he aims to encourage as much interaction in French as possible in order to become comfortable with the language.
"I wanted my students to have an idea of how French people really talk and express themselves, because it's often different from what you learn in school," Douglas said in an e-mail. "And I also wanted to make [students] want to engage in a conversation in French spontaneously and to feel like it can be a pleasure to speak French - and that [French] wasn't just a hard subject."
Douglas' role as a recitation leader offers some personal satisfaction as well: "The fact that many of my students speak French to me outside the recitation class is really great," he said.
Freshman Ariel Rosen enjoyed her French 21 recitation but didn't think it improved her language skills much. "Recitation was helpful for me in terms of my vocabulary, but I don't think it helped me with my overall French fluency. I didn't really see the connection between what was being taught in the course and my recitation class," she said.
Sophomore Julie Gomstyn found that recitations were helpful for learning French, but not in other subjects. "Generally, I find recitations to be kind of useless," she said. "It's only useful in the sense that it forces you to look over the material again, but I never learn anything new."
While recitation classes for language courses offer students more casual conversation, recitations for large lecture courses may provide students with their only outlet for class discussion.
Freshman Dean Ladin gave both positive and negative feedback about the recitation for his Introduction to American Politics class.
"When it came to the practical purposes of the course, such as papers and exams, section was very helpful," Ladin said. "But when we had to discuss readings and course material, I felt like most of the other students just liked to hear themselves talk. It didn't really help me learn."
Sophomore Susan Lee had similar feelings about her economics recitation: "A lot of the recitations were about taking quizzes, and not really reviewing the material at all," Lee said.
Still, Lee believed that recitations had some value: "I think recitations are needed for a lot of classes, but I don't think they're always carried out very well," she said.
Senior David Jenkins admitted to not finding his recitations worthwhile. "I went to one recitation freshman year for a physics class," he said. "It was not for me, and I have never been to a recitation since."
Though Jenkins pointed out that "I haven't taken that many classes that have recitations," he added, "I don't know if I would go anyway."
Though most students interviewed had mixed feelings about their recitations, a few had positive experiences. Senior Caitlin Johnson found her recitation for Introduction to Chemistry class "very helpful."
"A lot of the big concepts that were introduced very generally in lecture were then gone through piece by piece and really deconstructed and put into practice [in recitation]," Johnson said.
For Johnson, the intimate nature of science recitations resulted in the same comfort level other students found in language course recitations. "It's also a nice opportunity to go ask questions in a smaller setting," she said.
