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What's happening to reading?

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Re: What's happening to reading?

#161

Post by KittenInABox »

smeej wrote: post #145

I'm not sure what's happening, but I am sure it isn't new. I had to learn the hard way 15 years ago that the average American adult cannot parse a full-page email in standard English. It seemed crazy to me at the time and seems crazy to me now, given that the average adult has completed elementary school, but most people are barely functionally literate at all. I don't expect you to believe me. It's a weird claim. Bu…

I don't want to correlate the ability to read aloud to a stranger about the same as parsing. It's possible to read and not parse what you're saying (that's what teleprompters are for) and its possible to parse and not speak. Do we have formal studies for comprehension?

Re: What's happening to reading?

#162

Post by coliveira »

xphilter wrote: post #4

I can’t read it (lol) due to paywall, but 100% it’s because we stopped teaching kids how to read. But good luck trying to hold public schools accountable! https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/06/podcasts/the-daily/readin...

Agreed that society deciding to "educate" children with iPads instead of books would lead to unforeseen consequences for their cognitive skills.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#163

Post by deltarholamda »

jasonthorsness wrote: post #26
anzumitsu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the preface, the study in question dealt with the opening of Chapter 1

I like it “London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizz…

Summarizers will shorten this to something like "It was very muddy in London." Very lossy compression.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#164

Post by allturtles »

bee_rider wrote: post #93
allturtles wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just university students, but English majors [0]. [0]: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/922346 It's a very depressing study overall: " When we asked our subjects to name British and American authors and/or works of the nineteenth-century, 48 percent of those from KRU2 and 52 percent of those from KRU1 could recall at most only one author or title on their own."

I don’t think I could name many 19’th century engineers, and my list will quickly start to include folks who are more mathematicians, like Chebyshev. And we have the advantage that we literally use equations named after these guys! Names are trivia, imo. The memorization of trivia is… it happens of course, but it is just a symptom of learning.

> I don’t think I could name many 19’th century engineers

Unlike engineering, the whole English literature curriculum in high school is built around reading particular works by particular historical writers. The highlights of nineteenth-century literature should have been well covered in high school (and beyond - some of these people are seniors in college!). An English major who cannot remember any works or authors from the nineteenth century would be equivalent to engineering major who can't remember any algebra.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#165

Post by beloch »

asimpletune wrote: post #95

Summarizers start with the default assumption that reading is an obstacle standing between the reader and some kind of reward. Even the idea that knowledge is something that is capable of being transferred is something that has to be assumed at one’s peril. On the other it's those of us who’ve read in the old school style, for fun, in private that are more convinced of the opposite than anyone. If anything getting su…

Click-bait longform is where things went wrong.

I read for work, but I also read in my spare time. I love reading about things that I know very little about. Books still generally live up to their synopsis and respect your time, if you choose them well. I mostly stick to books for my leisure reading.

Long-form articles have become like opening a box of chocolates in the Forest Gump sense. "You never know what you're going to get." That half-nonsensical title that somehow got you to click isn't going to be explained, clarified, or elaborated on until you're fifteen minutes in, and its a coin-toss if the article will even answer the questions it pretended to ask. The odds are high that the author will go off on a tangent and never return.

When you're baited into reading a rambling, unfocused longform article that has nothing to do with it's title, it often feels like you've been swindled out of your time. That's because you have been swindled. I heartily encourage people to use AI to produce abstracts of long-form articles before reading them. It's like installing an alarm system. Don't let long-form thieves steal your time.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#166

Post by rizzom5000 »

smeej wrote: post #145

I'm not sure what's happening, but I am sure it isn't new. I had to learn the hard way 15 years ago that the average American adult cannot parse a full-page email in standard English. It seemed crazy to me at the time and seems crazy to me now, given that the average adult has completed elementary school, but most people are barely functionally literate at all. I don't expect you to believe me. It's a weird claim. Bu…

I believe you, and this has been know for decades. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna10928755

The underlying truth here is worse than 'majority of educated are illiterate'. Collectively, we've built these delusions into our culture. Perhaps there is less suffering this way.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#167

Post by mvdtnz »

smeej wrote: post #145

I'm not sure what's happening, but I am sure it isn't new. I had to learn the hard way 15 years ago that the average American adult cannot parse a full-page email in standard English. It seemed crazy to me at the time and seems crazy to me now, given that the average adult has completed elementary school, but most people are barely functionally literate at all. I don't expect you to believe me. It's a weird claim. Bu…

I think that you're greatly overstating the point.

> But walk into any average grocery store and hand someone a page out of a book and ask them to read it out loud to you.

I doubt that you have done this, but if you have please stop doing it. This is literal insane behaviour.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#168

Post by nemomarx »

beloch wrote: post #165
asimpletune wrote: post #95

Summarizers start with the default assumption that reading is an obstacle standing between the reader and some kind of reward. Even the idea that knowledge is something that is capable of being transferred is something that has to be assumed at one’s peril. On the other it's those of us who’ve read in the old school style, for fun, in private that are more convinced of the opposite than anyone. If anything getting su…

Click-bait longform is where things went wrong. I read for work, but I also read in my spare time. I love reading about things that I know very little about. Books still generally live up to their synopsis and respect your time, if you choose them well. I mostly stick to books for my leisure reading. Long-form articles have become like opening a box of chocolates in the Forest Gump sense. "You never know what you're…

Why are you reading these articles at all, even enough to summarize them?

Re: What's happening to reading?

#169

Post by Zedseayou »

0xffff2 wrote: post #56
jcranmer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect a majority of the population has no idea what "Michaelmas term" is. And there's some other phrases in there that require some familiarity with things commonplace in the 19th century that aren't so in the 21st century.

Count me among those who have no idea when Michaelmas is, but does it really matter? The next sentence tells you it is sometime around November. The whole passage is laden with overlapping context clues.

One example student in the study does not look it up and misinterprets "Michaelmas Term" as a person, presumably because it has "Michael" in it. Knowing it is even a time is half the battle.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#170

Post by fishpen0 »

kridsdale1 wrote: post #153
SamBam wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually, young people are writing more. Is this a feeling, or something you know from statistics? Many of the teens I know (I'm a teacher) aren't writing blog posts, or even comments on Reddit. They're watching YouTube videos and not interacting back with anything more than a thumbs up. Sure, some are writing on anime subreddits or whatever, but I don't want to make generalizations for what teens are doing across…

They’re writing in iMessage, Instagram, and ChatGPT.

But not in paragraphs. Their written language in those forums is short form sentences that are a mix of emojis and almost randomly inserted words that are more akin to honorifics sprinkled in to convey tone "no cap" "frfr"
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