College English Majors Can't Read
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
|
This recently published paper looked at the reading ability of English majors at two colleges in the middle tier. Not particularly selective, but also not open enrollment. Average reading ACT score of the participants was 22.4, around the 74th percentile. Perhaps a 550 in SAT English terms, ie a group of students which should have a substantial portion of 'college material'.
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/922346 "This paper analyzes the results from a think-aloud reading study designed to test the reading comprehension skills of 85 English majors from two regional Kansas universities. From January to April of 2015, subjects participated in a recorded, twenty-minute reading session in which they were asked to read the first seven paragraphs of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House out loud to a facilitator and then translate each sentence into plain English. Before subjects started the reading tests, they were given access to online resources and dictionaries and advised that they could also use their own cell phones as a resource. The facilitators also assured the subjects that were free to go at their own pace and did not have to finish reading all seven paragraphs by the end of the exam. As part of the study, each subject filled out a survey collecting personal data (class rank, G.P.A., etc.) and took a national literacy exam (the Degrees of Reading Power Test 10A). After the 85 taped reading tests were completed, the results were transcribed and coded." As can be expected, the results are horrendous. "Beyond their reading tactics, problematic readers were continually challenged by the figures of speech that are woven into the novel’s descriptions. 57 percent of the subjects would ignore a figure of speech altogether and try to translate the literal meanings around it while 41 percent would interpret at least one figure of speech literally, even if it made no sense in the context of the sentence. One subject even imagined dinosaurs lumbering around London: Original Text: 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. Subject: [Pause.] [Laughs.] So it’s like, um, [Pause.] the mud was all in the streets, and we were, no . . . [Pause.] so everything’s been like kind of washed around and we might find Megalosaurus bones but he’s says they’re waddling, um, all up the hill. The subject cannot make the leap to figurative language. She first guesses that the dinosaur is just “bones” and then is stuck stating that the bones are “waddling, um, all up the hill” because she can see that Dickens has the dinosaur moving. Because she cannot logically tie the ideas together, she just leaves her interpretation as is and goes on to the next sentence. " This next one is an attempt by someone described as a 'competent reader' "Original Text: 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 . . . Facilitator: Before you go on, I’m going to ask you to kind of explain. Subject: Oh, O.K. Facilitator: what you read so far, so. Subject: O.K. Two characters it’s pointed out this Michaelmas and Lord Chancellor described as sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Facilitator: O.K. Subject: Um, talk about the November weather. Uh, mud in the streets. And, uh, I do probably need to look up “Megolasaurus”— “meet a Megolasaurus, forty feet long or so,” so it’s probably some kind of an animal or something or another that it is talking about encountering in the streets. And “wandering like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.” So, yup, I think we’ve encountered some kind of an animal these, these characters have, have met in the street. yup, I think we’ve encountered some kind of an animal these, these characters have, have met in the street." To add to the horror, this study is based on data collected in *2015*. However bad things were then, they are much worse now. I will add: if the liberal arts had not destroyed themselves, these kids could very well have done better. Abandonment of the slow process of scaffolding kids through more and more difficult texts through elementary and then high school has helped breed rampant failures by English departments in colleges. For those of you without time to read the whole study, here's the substack from which I stole the title: https://kittenbeloved.substack.com/p/college-english-majors-cant-read |
Anonymous
|
I loved Bleak House as a kid!
Even my kid with learning disorders and severe ADHD had a 35 out of 36 on his ACT and could understand this. Also, I see you and the author in the linked article have cherry-picked the worst responses 
Well, this sure explain the abysmal English curriculum of my kids' public school system! Only AP English courses, Comp and Lit, have any kind of rigor in MCPS. The rest is... horrible. I gave my kids reading lists of classics every summer since they were little. Otherwise they would have had practically no meaningful exposure to literature, and no practice in reading such complex texts, before AP Lit. |
Anonymous
|
“If we teachers in the university ignore our students’ actual reading levels… we run the risk of passing out diplomas to students who have not mastered reading complex texts”
That’s already happening at the high school level. The curriculum has been gutted. Outside of AP and IB, students read very few full-length texts. Teachers can’t individually work with students because we’ve crammed 30+ students in a room and taken away the teachers’ time to plan and grade. Kids get pushed through because we don’t give teachers the resources they need, nor do we give students the challenge they need. And I suspect this is true for other disciplines as well. Where’s the study on engineering majors in 2025 compared to 2000? |
Anonymous
| English major here: I think this is a combination of phones and screens, which have killed reading for pleasure in many kids, and the fact that teaching of literature has become “politics by other means” and now almost entirely centers concern about inclusion and contemporary obsession with questions of identity at the expense of teaching challenging works. When you swap out The Scarlet Letter for some sort of Y.A.-level story about the challenges facing Identity Group X, it will have pedagogical impacts. |
Anonymous
I’m an elementary teacher with a master’s in English and the use of lower level texts over the last twenty years is appalling. I don’t see anything like what you describe about content, but teachers are definitely giving students much less complex texts because they say students can’t understand the harder stuff. If students aren’t reading grade level texts when they leave fifth or sixth grade and have access to intensive literacy teaching and interventions, it’s going to be much harder to get on level before they graduate. |
Anonymous
|
I switched my kid from public to Catholic and he was so happy that he would finally be reading real books (not excerpts) and learn actual content.
Public school students are extremely over tested so of course their readings are basically test prep. In private school, my son’s midterms and finals (stating in 6th grade in all 6 core subjects) were essays comparing themes and characters in 2-3 different novels they reel throughout the year. |
Anonymous
|
I was a college English major and I’ve read and loved all types of literature. I think we need to separate different kinds of “hard,” because one matters and the other is a distraction. One reason Dickens is hard is the antique language. When Bleak House was written it was the beach read of the times - it wasn’t considered difficult. Because it was written in the vernacular. I see no real urgency in making sure people can read Shakespeare or Chaucer. Should English majors? Yes, even if they don’t love it, they should read some of where our language and literature came from.
All kids should be taught how to read, analyze, and understand meaningful text, though. Plot, metaphor, argument, character development, voice…those are all important. I’m not particularly fussed, though, about what sort of books kids read in order to understand those things, though. Pride and Prejudice is chick lit, but “hard” to read because of language. Harry Potter is easy to read because of its simple language written for children, but it can serve just fine to train kids to identify the important elements in literature and enjoy them. I wonder if this study had used modern literature - say, The Kite Runner, Life of Pi, etc - whether they would have had different results. Archaic language doesn’t making literature better, it just makes it old. |
Anonymous
| The key terms are “regional Kansas universities.” |
Anonymous
| What I don't understand is how my DC (not a college English major, but a college grad) who can read very well is unable to find a job when these people are the competition. |
Anonymous
I know, right? Because the recruiters can't read either. |
Anonymous
|
I agree with 9:19.
The opening of Bleak House is a particularly challenging passage, far more challenging than the rest of that novel. I would argue it was written specifically to grab the reader by making the familiar strange. The passage includes a number of referents that would have been familiar to 19th century English readers (Michaelmas Term, Lord Chancellor, Lincoln’s Inn Hall, Holborn Hill, and what London used to be like in November back when everyone burned coal for heating and cooking and the streets were not yet paved). But no one in 21st century Kansas is or should be casually familiar with these things. So for them this passage makes the strange, stranger. Of course they struggled. The use of this passage for this particular research purpose leads me to believe that the researchers themselves don’t really understand the material or that they are operating in bad faith. |
Anonymous
Yikes! There's your answer |
Anonymous
| I mean, maybe I'm a snob, but I wouldn't expect a college freshman w/ 550 SAT attending school in Kansas to understand any Dickens. |
Anonymous
It's not so much the 30+ students in one class, it's that it's 30+ students ranging from functionally illiterate to above grade level. No teachers should have to deal with that. But that's exactly what our public schools demand from kindergarten onwards. No tracking, mixed ability classes only. We've removed prerequisites from honors and AP classes, and, worse, instituted this insane "honors for all" nonsense. We don't retain kids, nor do we provide them with the proper remediation they need. Just pass them along, keep those promotion and graduation high. |
Anonymous
The Scarlet Letter is an overwrought and depressing story that relies on a visceral caring about social norms that have less power now. I agree that the current curriculum default is to assign identity politics literature. However, replacing long dreadful works with shorter dreadful works isn't going to fix things. Vanity Fair or Pride and Prejudice would be better choices. My personal wish is to add more autobiography (including from diverse authors). I think real people do a better job of conveying their perspectives and struggles than fiction. It helps so much with the authenticity question. The difficulty of comprehending the writing would naturally vary based on the vintage of the material. I also think getting kids interested in reading the type of writing found in the New Yorker would be useful. My own kid picked up a lot about voice and style from reading it during high school. The articles in the New Yorker are at a level that's reasonable for college grads who don't go into academia. I've read a lot of the most acclaimed classic novels and liked very few of them. I'm not fond of depressing subject matter. A lot of them are dramatically tragic. I don't mind that they are long. They just aren't enjoyable enough. I obviously can't defend my reading skills very well over the internet, but I had a 780V, am a PBK, and took a writing-intensive senior English seminar as a junior in college. I'm sure I would have at least made it into the top bracket of that Kansas reading study. The way back from today's low baseline is to find content that stretches kids' reading capabilities while also being interesting to them. That just might involve permanently deprioritizing James Fenimore Cooper and others of that ilk. Most of the faces on a set of "Authors" playing cards. Times change. Some things I would keep: Canterbury Tales Shakespeare Anne Bradstreet Colonial political writing Vanity Fair Moby Dick Walden Things Fall Apart 1984 A work by Jane Austen A Chekhov play Writing by Frederick Douglass My Indian Boyhood by Luther Standing Bear Textual analysis of fairytales Of Dickens, I'd do Great Expectations if I had to. Certainly not Bleak House. I read most of Dickens' famous works voluntarily in high school (received a giant volume from a best friend as a birthday present in 1985). Bleak House was assigned in college honors freshman composition. I remember thinking there were good reasons it was less frequently assigned. |