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[quote=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[/quote]

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