Comment by class3shock
9 months ago
This is the ranting (disguised as "analysis") of a self righteous English major annoyed that students don't get readings that are written in archaic English. The only person who can't read is the people who can't read the room and understand that this stuff is of zero relevance or usefulness to the vast majority of students. This is like getting mad when people show up for a Italian class and they don't understand the Latin readings you give them.
The article's main point isn't about archaic but rather figurative language.
> These problematic readers, which again comprise 58% of the English majors in the study, cannot differentiate between literal and figurative speech in literature. When they encounter unfamiliar vocabulary, they sometimes leap to fantastical conclusions about the meaning of a passage, as this participant who thinks the mention of “whiskers” refers not to a bearded man but to an animal.
The examples given should be simple to parse for native English speakers, which the subjects were.
>> 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 drizzle with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun.
Digging into the full paper, as curious what the root cause is presumed to be.
> zero relevance or usefulness to the vast majority of students
these are not your average student; these are _English_ majors. If anyone is supposed to be able to read and understand one of their most famous writers ever, it's them.
The conclusion of the article is that the students are functionally illiterate, not “missing the requisite study we’d hope they would have done on their own by now.”
Sensationalist clickbait bullshit, the entire article. Absolute waste of time.
I'd agree for the general population. But if you can't read English Literature and you are studying English Literature, that's pretty bad.
I'd expect someone majoring in Classics to understand Latin.
Wow. Just wow. Please check your coping mechanisms at the door.
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