Archie Zariski [1 May 96] commented on how monologue expositions DO seem good for academics, and Clark Quinn [2 May 96] did too. I am struck by the evidence that small class sizes are most important for the first few years at school. Perhaps it is not altogether a horrible accident that class sizes get bigger as a learner moves up the educational system, or that academics actually choose to spend their time and money at conferences or listening to invited speakers: it actually works for us. This doesn't mean it must work for our students; but it may mean that being able to learn from monologue expositions is a worthwhile skill for them to acquire, and we should encourage it and support it.
We have, then, two alternative views. (1) Diana's analogy with trying to read Euro Directives implies that anyone can learn from monologues if they are expert in the subject already, while everyone will have difficulty when setting out in a new subject area. (2) An alternative view is that it is a learning skill not domain expertise that people may gradually pick up during their years of schooling. So monologues may be totally ineffective for four year olds, of some effectiveness at 14 already, and very effective after 40 years of constant practice. If this is right, then it has immediate implications for my university: here the biggest class sizes are in the first year, and they get much smaller later on. This is exactly the wrong way round on this view about learning skills, and we should be providing direct training support in the first year on how to learn from lectures: after all our students have never experienced anything much like this before, yet we just assume they will know what to do when sitting in a lecture. The evidence does not support this assumption.
I have wandered into discussing lectures here. This is probably right: I think Archie's notion of skilled use by learners of exposition applies even more strongly than to texts, which learners will have had more and longer practice at in school.
So is it domain expertise or a general learning skill that is the important factor?