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  • Someone posted a lengthy podcast about how many kids are taught to read badly. https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/

    There was another article a couple weeks ago that said less than half of us adults can read at a 6th grade level. 6th grade is before you really get into metaphor and subtext. That's just reading for plot.

    Some people legitimately might be bad at reading.

    The people on text based sites are probably better than a whole chunk of people that don't even post.

    • It’s not about reading comprehension, it’s about the reader not understanding the unwritten parameters of the question. That the possibility that neither have greater value exists.

      I recall one occasion where something similar happened to me back in middle school. We were learning about probability using dice rolls. One of the questions on the worksheet was (something like) “What is the best way to influence the probability of the dice roll outcome?”

      When the question was posed to me I fully understood that there was no way to influence the probability, assuming no influence by external factors, the probability of a given outcome will always be equal. But the fact that the question was posed to me in this way led me to believe that this was not the answer the question was looking for. It implied that in fact there was a way to influence the result, so I got very frustrated in trying to come up with an answer which made sense. In this situation I felt that actually the question was wrong, and got upset that the task I had been set to answer it was impossible to complete correctly. When I realised that the true intent was just to get me to acknowledge that there was no way to influence the result, I felt betrayed by the framing of the question. I knew the answer the whole time, it was obvious, but the framing of the question misled me to believe that was not the intended answer.

      The question in my case wasn’t actually an earnest question about probability, the pretext for is was deliberately false. There was no way for me to figure it out using better reading comprehension. The intent of the question can only be realised via comprehension of non-written concepts, essentially being able to recognise when someone is trying to throw you a curveball. It isn't quite the same as just recognising the path of the ball being thrown to you, because in that case it appears to be being thrown away from you.

      If you examine the person replying person's responses, that's pretty much where they're at. The whole 'dude is expecting the answer to be their own views' thing is conjecture, what they're expecting is a view given an existing proposition that there is a view to take.

      • The intent of the question can only be realised via comprehension of non-written concepts, essentially being able to recognise when someone is trying to throw you a curveball.

        Dude, hate to break it to you, but that is one of the key skills of reading comprehension.

        • Damn, my ego from 20-something years ago is shattered. Anyway please, tell me more about how a key part of reading comprehension is actually comprehension of non-textual information ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )

          • Since you seem to be struggling to understand the concept, here's a few examples: math and science word problems, metaphor, subtext, allegory, koans, poetry, song lyrics, riddles, jokes, sarcasm.

            • Yeah, I'm struggling. That's a list of general concepts in literature, which isn't synonymous with a concept in reading comprehension like you're using it. I've also re-examined but can't see where any of these listed concepts appear in either the OP or the example I gave. It seems you're just trying to catch me out by pointing to an exception in a metaphor I gave to demonstrate my point rather than engaging with the point at all

              Reading comprehension is the ability to read text, process it and understand its meaning. If your point is about processing and understanding information that isn't present in the text, it isn't about reading comprehension. And in neither of the examined cases is anything present in the text where reading comprehension could serve to fill the gap in the respondent's external understanding.

              I'm not saying it isn't a problem that the person in the meme didn't comprehend what was going on, or that I was right for my childhood response to a math question. I'm saying that someone going on to use the OP as a basis to go on to make a point about e.g. younger generations being less literate is notably wrong for several reasons.

              They're wrong because it isn't to do with reading comprehension. They're wrong when you consider that the same point is made by every older generation about every younger generation for the past few centuries despite a continued uptrend in global literacy. And it's ironic that they're wrong making a point about poor reading comprehension as a result of failing to comprehend that the person building a strawman out of the initial meme respondent is talking out of their ass. Poor comprehension is a potential reading of the comment in question, but the person talking about them seeking to reinforce their bias jumped to that conclusion in bad faith, and now y'all in this thread are substantiating that without properly examining whether there's actually basis for that particular reading of their comment at all. And that my friend, is a failure of your reading comprehension. A deference to petty bickering under an illusion of being grounded in logic and literacy, arrived at via mental gymnastics

              • Lol. Spoken like a LLM struggling to convince us it understands, i.e. lots of words, little substance or insight.

                • Beep boop. Human's central point is that two unalike things are actually the same thing. Does not compute

          • Right because you'll never run into situations where someone says one thing but actually means something else

            • That's not what I meant. What I'm saying is that when someone is verbally saying something to you but means something else, that has nothing to do with reading comprehension. Literally neither of you are reading at all in that scenario as you put it. Can you explain what it has to do with reading other than being broadly related to communicating information?

              If they were writing to you instead, and there was some characteristic about what they wrote which could function as a piece of information you could use to comprehend additional information and make deductions about what they wrote beyond the literal words on the page, then it would be related to reading comprehension. But that's not the case here, neither with the OP nor my example

              • What I'm saying is that when someone is verbally saying something to you but means something else, that has nothing to do with reading comprehension.

                This is where you are wrong.

                • I think you're perhaps mistaking a very broad and loose concept of comprehension generally for the concept of reading comprehension in the way it's used in the meme and my example, where it is has a defined meaning which indeed limits the scope of the concept to comprehension of things that are read. While perhaps not explicitly wrong for other purposes, for purposes of this conversation reading comprehension is the ability to read, process and understand text.

                  • WTF is this gibberish? Bad AI chat bot.

                    • I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't let you use a concept you don't understand as the basis for your opinion

              • There is effectively no difference between someone verbally saying something to you, and someone sending you that message via text. Even then, the initial context of this was a written test question. An inability to understand that a written question can have no correct answer would be a matter of reading comprehension by your own definition here.

                To say it more explicitly, subtext is quite literally non-textual information contained within text, either written or spoken. The ability to understand subtext is directly linked with reading comprehension.

                • Sorry, I'm sure you're just being facetious and have already realised this, but I'll go ahead and sign off by pointing out the obvious that speech as a medium of information is inextricably linked to concepts such as tone, manner, body language. You can't just make shit up like "spoken text" and pretend written and verbal communication aren't fundamentally different concepts, gimme a break dude

                  • Written and spoken communication are different things, but you can't pretend they aren't extremely closely linked. My point still stands—an ability to understand subtext is a factor of reading comprehension.

                    • I am familiar with the concept of subtext, thanks. I think you've mistaken that what is incumbent upon you here is to demonstrate what subtext has been contained within the text as you put it, in either the OP or my example, that was missed.

                      I mean in the case of my old school memory I think you'll just have to indulge my recollection that there was none (in fact, that all subtext in that situation related to being in math class etc purposefully indicated that it was a genuine math question, by the teacher's design). But in the OP greentext parable, literally some text presented devoid of context, which actually is relevant in that it establishes that there is a closed loop of literary conventions in that text which can be analysed or 'comprehended' - what is the subtext?

                      • In the greentext, the question is posed: which is better, small boobs or large boobs? Rather than explicitly telling the man "neither is better," the Great Philosopher uses a metaphor to help the man come to that understanding himself. The subtext is that it's an invalid question; despite their differences, neither is better, just as $30 in coins has the same monetary value as $30 in bills.

                        The ability to recognize when a question is itself invalid is important to reading comprehension, and you cannot fully understand a concept if you aren't capable of declining to take statements about it at face value. You may have read that it isn't possible to influence the roll of a die before that test, or you may have assumed that it isn't, but if simply seeing the question "how can you influence the roll of a fair die" makes you think that it must be possible, then you didn't understand that it isn't. Had you had better reading comprehension at that time, you may have been able to answer the question correctly without any further context needed. All you needed to do was not assume that the question had an answer.

                        Of course, that's not very appropriate for a math class. Better to teach students that in... Social studies? It's been such a long time since I've been in school, I can't even remember what class is meant to teach literacy.

      • I mean, sometimes questions have assumed context that make it harder to understand or answer correctly. I don't think how money works is an obscure topic among contemporary Internet using people.

        I think "rhetorical questions" are either a subcategory or close relative of reading comprehension. When someone says "who watches the watchmen?" they're not looking for a literal "Bob, cuz that's his hobby, got a police scanner and everything" answer. You're supposed to think about it and make some connections.

        Rhetorical questions in the style of the OP go back thousands of years. Being unfamiliar with this concept is not great. Maybe not a reading comprehension problem, strictly, but poor literacy.

        And for your dice question is "weight the dice" not an acceptable answer?

        • A close relative, sure. But to point to reading comprehension and go on to elocute about that would not have basis in this example, in my view. The crux of the issue literally isn't written, as you say, it is assumed. The point being it is an implication from fully external understanding. It isn't that there is an inference to be made or dots to be connected based on notions only vaguely referenced by the text, e.g that the value could be equal / that dice rolls being equal is a valid answer. Because there is no vague reference in the text. Correct understanding in either case fully depends on understanding of concepts outside the text. The person with the best reading comprehension in the land would be unable to comprehend the text without that external understanding.

          To put it more succinctly, if comprehension is understanding stuff, reading comprehension is understanding stuff based on what is written, right? The issue being that in this case the lack of comprehension is about something that wasn't written. It is a comprehension issue unspecific to reading.

      • On the other hand life is full of those kinds of "bad questions": poorly framed questions, leading ones, arguments in bad faith, etc. You're going to encounter them on future tests and in real life, and often the stakes are higher.

        That question might have been shit at teaching about probability but it was a far more important lesson in disguise.

        • For sure, I'm more pushing back on using this example as a basis to go on to make a point about reading comprehension. It's quite ironic that the issue isn't really about reading comprehension, don't you think?

      • Even though you understood it as "influence the dice without external phenomena", and it may be stated elsewhere in the worksheet, the question doesn't explicitly state "no external phenomena". Just weight the dice.

        • After voicing my specific problems with the question (effectively answering it in the way it was designed to be answered in the process), I was rebuffed by the teacher because this protest was not in the form of a written answer on the sheet. They were dead set on me writing the specific non-answer they thought of and marking anything else incorrect, regardless of whether understanding of probability was demonstrated. I, like most of my classmates, contrived some nonsense answer such as "the cutouts for the number markings on each side slightly imbalance the dice", and was marked wrong.

    • We should create a space to help these people, maybe some kind of center for adults who can't read good and wanna learn to do other stuff good too.

    • That is an excellent podcast

    • One good thing is most of those "adults can't read" things don't take into account that many adults can read just fine...in spanish, or their otherwise native language, but get counted for these because their english reading is less than 6th grade.

      Still too damn many english-as-a-first-languagers can't read either, but usually less than the scary numbers suggest for america.

194 comments