Thread 24519040

https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/922346
They were a sample of English majors and predominantly white. They were given dictionaries and online resources to look words or concepts up they couldn’t understand and were also allowed to use their phones.

Despite this the majority of them failed to comprehend the first seven paragraphs of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, they thought for example there was a literal Megalosaurus wandering around the city or that the Lord High Chancellor was literally in a room with a mouse because they saw the word “whiskers”

What went wrong?

lol what

>>24519040 (OP)
Average person is retarded. Nothing new.

>>24519040 (OP)
>Makes a thread critiquing reading comprehension
>Failed to comprehend the study he is quoting
lol
They aren't graduates. They are undergraduate students. Undergraduate students at two no-name regional universities in Kansas.

>>24519040 (OP)
Oof. And this was from ten years ago. I bet they're worse now.

>>24519040 (OP)
Makes sense because Charles Dickens wrote in a fake language instead of American.

>On such an afternoon, if ever, the Lord High Chancellor ought to be sitting here—as here he is—with a foggy glory round his head, softly fenced in with crimson cloth and curtains, addressed by a large advocate with great whiskers, a little voice, and an interminable brief, and outwardly directing his contemplation to the lantern in the roof, where he can see nothing but fog.

>Subject:
>Describing him in a room with an animal I think? Great whiskers?

>Facilitator:
>[Laughs.]

>Subject:
>A cat?

>Note that the subject, who is not accessing any of the concrete details in the passage, finds a subject (the Lord Chancellor) and one recognizable word, [End Page 9] “whiskers,” and concludes that the character is in a room with a cat. At this point, she does not seem to understand what she is reading, and so she links a few words together to form some kind of response.

>>24519054
The title was “university graduates” not “graduate students”, granted there was nothing I could find suggesting what year they were (I.e if they were going to graduate soon or if they were all first years). It still isn’t a great look, reminds me of that one article that talked about how Ivy League students don’t read entire books either

>>24519083
I never said graduate students either. EPIC FAIL!!

>>24519040 (OP)
We’ve had this thread 20 times already faggot. We know. Fuck off.

>>24519227
>t. Midwestern graduate

>>24519061
Fucking hell they're allowed a dictionary too. These people are completely inept.
>Facilitators also provided subjects with access to online resources and dictionaries and told them that they could also use their own cell phones as a resource.

>>24519040 (OP)
You ever scroll down and read comments on a youtube video? those are real people with real degrees
>>24519061
>>Facilitator:
>>[Laughs.]
kek

>>24519040 (OP)
why did he write about a dinosaur in the rain? That's so dumb.

>>24519061
To be fair, no one says whiskers for facial hair any more. I remember being confused by this too when I first heard it and that was a few decades ago. If you're not given any context for the quote, it's not unreasonable to assume they mean a cat.