The difficulty in studying philosophy is the level of reflection it demands on this process. This must be aided by the development of a common set of terms for describing the philosophical process itself. Students also find the objective tone of philosophical texts difficult to reconcile with their polemical goals. The objective tone encourages a view of the author as neutral. The fact that a text is committed often leads students to dismiss it as merely the expression of an opinion.
Philosophy involves the construction of arguments.
As a result, many philosophical texts are difficult to penetrate. The effort a student will have to put into understanding a given movement of the argument will mean that she loses sight of the place of that movement in the structure of the argument as a whole. So tutors must be careful to set texts of an appropriate level and should probably also include explanations of what is happening at each point in the text. Chambers talks here of the development of meta-discourses and of the use of audiotapes in conjunction with the text. The audio element will call the student's attention to or will offer explanations of aspects of the text.