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i appreciated this study: "They Can't Read Very Well: A Study of the Reading Comprehension Skills Of English Majors At Two Midwestern Universities"

essentially, a pair of professors set out to test their intuitive sense that students at the college level were struggling with complex text. they recruited 85 students, a mix of english majors and english education majors - so, theoretically, people focusing on literature, and people preparing to teach adolescents how to read literature - and had them read-while-summarizing the first seven paragraphs of dickens's bleak house (or as much as they made it through in the 20 minute session). they provided dictionaries and also said students could use their phones to look up whatever they wanted, including any unfamiliar words or references. they found that the majority of the students - 58%, or 49 out of the 85 students - functionally could not understand dickens at all, and only 5% - a mere 4 out of the 85 students - proved themselves proficient readers (leaving the remaining 38%, or 32 students, as what the study authors deemed "competent" students, most of whom could understand about half the literal meaning - pretty low bar for competence - although a few of whom, they note, did much better than the rest in this group if not quite well enough to be considered proficient).

what i really appreciated about this study was its qualitative descriptions of the challenges and reading behaviors of what the authors call "problematic readers" (that bottom 58%), which resonated strongly with my own experiences of students who struggle with reading. here's their blunt big picture overview of these 49 students:

The majority of these subjects could understand very little of Bleak House and did not have effective reading tactics. All had so much trouble comprehending concrete detail in consecutive clauses and phrases that they could not link the meaning of one sentence to the next. Although it was clear that these subjects did try to use various tactics while they read the passage, they were not able to use those tactics successfully. For example, 43 percent of the problematic readers tried to look up words they did not understand, but only five percent were able to look up the meaning of a word and place it back correctly into a sentence. The subjects frequently looked up a word they did not know, realized that they did not understand the sentence the word had come from, and skipped translating the sentence altogether.

the idea that they had so many trouble with every small piece of a text that they could not connect ideas on a sentence by sentence basis is very familiar to me from teaching and tutoring, as was the habit of thought seen in the example of the student who gloms on to the word "whiskers" in a sea of confusion and guesses incorrectly that a cat is present - struggling readers, in my experience, seem to use familiar nouns as stepping stones in a flood of overwhelm, hopping as best they can from one seemingly familiar image to the next. so was this observation, building off the example of a student who misses the fact that dickens is being figurative when he imagines a megalodon stalking the streets of london:

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. Like this subject, most of the problematic readers were not concerned if their literal translations of Bleak House were not coherent, so obvious logical errors never seemed to affect them. In fact, none of the readers in this category ever questioned their own interpretations of figures of speech, no matter how irrational the results. Worse, their inability to understand figurative language was constant, even though most of the subjects had spent at least two years in literature classes that discussed figures of speech. Some could correctly identify a figure of speech, and even explain its use in a sentence, but correct responses were inconsistent and haphazard. None of the problematic readers showed any evidence that they could read recursively or fix previous errors in comprehension. They would stick to their reading tactics even if they were unhappy with the results.

i have seen this repeatedly, too - actually i was particularly taken with how similar this is to the behavior of struggling readers at much younger ages - and would summarize the hypothesis i have forged over time as: struggling readers do not expect what they read to make sense. my hypothesis for why this is the case is that their reading deficits were not attended to or remediated adequately early enough, and so, in their formative years - the early to mid elementary grades - they spent a lot of time "reading" things that did not make sense to them - in fact they spent much more time doing this than they ever did reading things that did make sense to them - and so they did not internalize a meaningful subjective sense of what it feels like to actually read things.

like, i've said this before, but the year i taught third grade i had multiple students who told me they loved reading and then when i asked them about a book they were reading revealed that they had absolutely no idea what was going on - on a really basic literal level like "didn't know who said which lines of dialogue" and "couldn't identify which things or characters given pronouns referred to" - and were as best as i could tell sort of constructing their own story along the way using these little bits of things they thought they understood. that's what "reading" was, in their heads. and they were, in the curriculum/model that we used at the private school where i taught, receiving basically no support to clarify that that was not what reading was, nor any instruction that would actually help them with what they needed to do to improve (understand sentences) - and i realized over the course of that year that the master's program that had certified me in teaching elementary school had provided me with very little understanding of how to help these kids (with perhaps the sole exception of the class i took on communications disorders, not because these kids had communications disorders but because that was the only class where we ever talked, even briefly, about things like sentence structures that students may need instruction in and practice with to comprehend independently). when it comes to the literal, basic understanding of a text, the model of reading pedagogy i was taught has about 6 million little "tools" that all boil down to telling kids who functionally can't read to try harder to read. this is not productive, in my experience and opinion, for kids whose maximum effort persistently yields confusion. but things are so dysfunctional all the way up and down the ladder that you can be a senior in college majoring in english without anyone but a pair of professors with a strong work ethic noticing that you can't actually read.

couple other notes:

obviously it's a small study but i'm not sure i see a reason to believe these are particularly outlierish results (ACT scores - an imperfect metric but not a meritless one IMO for reading specifically, where the task mostly really is to read a set of texts written for the educated layperson and answer factual questions about them - were a little bit above the national average)

the study was published last year, but the research was conducted january to april 2015. so there's no pandemic influence, no AI issue - these are millennials who now would span roughly ages 28-32 (i guess it's possible one of the four first-year students was one of the very first members of gen z lol). if you're in your late 20s or early 30s, we are talking about people your age, and whatever the culprit is here, it was happening when you were in school.

i think some people might want to blame this on NCLB but i find this unconvincing for a variety of reasons. first of all, NCLB did not pass because everyone in 2001 agreed that education was super hunky-dory; in fact, the sold a story podcast outlines how an explicit goal of NCLB was to train teachers in systematic phonics instruction, because that was not the norm when NCLB was passed, and an unfortunate outcome was that phonics became politicized in ed world. second, anyone who understands anything about reading should need about ten minutes max to spend some time on standardized test prep and recognize that if your goal is truly to maximize scores... then the vast majority of your instructional time should be spent on improving actual reading skills because you actually can't meaningfully game these tests by "practicing main idea questions" (timothy shanahan addresses this briefly near the top of this post). so i find it very difficult to believe that any school that pivoted to multiple choice drill time in an attempt to boost reading scores was teaching reading effectively pre-NCLB, because no set of competent literacy professionals would think that would work even for the goal of raising test scores. third, NCLB mandated yearly testing in grades 3-8 but only one test year in high school; kansas set its reading and math test year in high school as tenth grade. so theoretically these kids all had two years of sweet sweet freedom from NCLB in which their teachers could have done whatever the fuck they wanted to teach these kids to actually read. the fact that they didn't suggests perhaps there were other problems afoot. fourth, and maybe most saliently for this particular study, the sample text was the first seven paragraphs of a novel - in other words, the exact kind of short incomplete text that NCLB allegedly demanded excessive time spent on. i'm not really sure what universe it makes sense in that students who can't read the first seven paragraphs of a novel would have become much better reader if everything else had been the same but they had been making completely wack associations based on nonsense guesses for all 300 pages instead. (if you read the study it's really clear that for problematic readers, things go off the rails immediately, in a way that a good program targeted at teaching mastery of text of 500 words or less would have done something about.)

all but 3 of the students reported A's and B's in their english classes and, again, 69% of them are juniors and seniors, so like... i mean idk kudos to these professors for being like "hold up can these kids actually read?" but clearly something is wack at the college level too [in 2015] if you can make your way through nearly an entire english major without being able to read the first seven paragraphs of a dickens novel. (once again i really do encourage you to look at the qualitative samples in the study, lest you think i am being uncharitable by summarizing understandable misunderstandings or areas of confusion that may resolve themselves with further exposure to the text as "can't read.") not to mention the fact that most students could not what they had learned in previous or current english classes and when asked to name british and american authors and/or works of the nineteenth century, roughly half the sample at each college could name at most one.

the authors of the study are struck by the fact that students who cannot parse the first 3 sentences of bleak house feel very confident about their ability to read the entire novel, and discover that this seeming disconnect is resolved by the fact that these students seem to conceptualize "reading" as "skimming and then reading sparknotes." i think it's really tempting to Kids These Days this phenomenon (although again these are people who in some cases have now been in the workforce for a decade) and categorize it as laziness or a lack of effort, but i think that there is, as i described above, a real and sincere confusion over what "reading" is in which this makes a certain logical sense because it's not like they have some store of actual reading experiences to compare it to. i also think it's pretty obvious looking at just how wildly severed from actual textual comprehension their readings are that these are not - or at least not entirely - students who could just work harder and master the entirety of bleak house all on their own. like i don't think you get from "charles dickens is describing a bunch of dinosaur bones actually walking the streets of london" to comfortably reading nineteenth century literature by just trying harder. i really just don't (and i say that acknowledging i personally have had students who like... were good readers if i was forcing them to work at it constantly... but i have also had students, including ones getting ready to enter college, who were clearly giving me everything they had and what they had was at the present moment insufficient). i think that speaks to a missing skillset that they don't know are missing, because they don't have any other experience of "reading" to compare it to.

just wanna highlight again that although they don't give the breakdown some of these students are not just english majors but english education majors a.k.a. the high school english teachers of tomorrow. some of them may be teaching high school english right now, in case anyone wishes to consider whether "maybe some high school english teachers can't read the first seven paragraphs of bleak house?" should be kept in mind when we discuss present-day educational ills.

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sidney crosby being a bird nerd is so on brand

You said the best experience in your playing career. I would imagine playing with Crosby’s up there too.

Sid’s the absolute man. You hear all these stories when you play against him. Like. He’s super nice. He’s like very genuine. He’s nice to everyone. He’s like the ultimate professional that I’ve seen. He makes sure everyone is having a good time, everyone feels comfortable. He works super hard. He’s hilarious. He loves hot stoving in the training room. Lives for it.

What does he like talking about? What’s his guilty pleasure? Is he like the team mom shit like (??) on the Bravo Network?

No, no, no, he’s more.. I think he might be mad at me for saying this but… He, like, knows a bunch about birds. We’ll be driving on the bus and he’ll see a bird and he’ll tell me exactly what type of bird it is.

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i have kind of a random question. in a few hockey fics i've read, including one of yours (3:30) this notion of fining someone for talking in the shower is mentioned. is this like, a known cultural thing about hockey locker rooms? i'm not that familiar with the sport, but i've always been curious about this

I had to go back and check the story, I definitely just made it up because I was trying to be funny! Maybe it's real and just a coincidence? Or I read something about it and have just forgotten now? But I know how my brain works and I definitely got to that point in the story and thought to myself "oh ho ho time for some team banter."

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hi! i've been an avid reader of your work for a few years now, and i just wanted to say you've had a massive influence not only on my approach to writing but my appreciation for it too! your writing speaks to me on a level i've only encountered maybe once or twice in my life, and i finally got around to purchasing your first novel - i'm so excited! it was a part of my christmas present for myself along with an alphasmart3000. you've really inspired me to seriously pursue what i love the most :) ❤️ i'm so excited to dive into your novels and see what's next! happy holidays xxx

💜💜💜 I hope you'll love it! Writing original fiction is sooo different from fanfiction in sooo many ways, I'm still figuring it out! Every book is a learning experience.

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hi, this is a little funny to ask but back in 2020 I saved a quote from one of your Sid/geno fics in my notes because it meant so much to me and now for the life of me I can’t figure out which fic it came from. I’ve been rereading each of your fics to try to figure it out but also thought I’d come straight to the source. Would you know which fic this quote is from? It has helped me tremendously over the last few years and inspired me to be brave ❤️

“He couldn’t help what his heart wanted. Why limit himself to a cautious and narrow life? He would rather be open and feel everything and hurt himself a thousand times than experience only what was safe. No joy existed without an equal and opposite sorrow. He would take all of it: fear, suffering, heartbreak, the shameful memories that tormented him at night, and when he was old he could look back and say that at least he had tried. He had done everything, he had been a human person in this world."

I forgot to answer this, anon I'm glad you figured it out because I'm not sure I would have remembered which story that came from 😭

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Hey, if you don't mind me asking, which book and/or fic are you currently working on? (Apologies if this comes across as odd, I just really love your books and am eagerly awaiting more...I was especially intrigued by the dragon poly couple idea ahshdhdjdj)

Right now I'm working on a sci-fi duology -- second chance romance, illicit priest yearnings, mining, architecture, first contact, and bugs. But in all honesty I had another baby in May and am getting absolutely nothing done 🙃 I need to send out a newsletter which has been on my to-do list since July. HOWEVER this is a temporary state of affairs as babies grow up and I love writing.

I do still plan to write the dragon poly book 🐉 it's outlined and I have about 8k written. Set in fantasy ancient Sumer. The dragon bangs both of them. Here's the heroine meeting her future husband for the first time:

She laid eyes on Kisare for the first time a week later, on the morning the engagement contract was signed. Her father had a table brought out to the palm court near the throne room, and there he and Kisare rolled their cylinder seals across the wet clay to mark their agreement. Rubati stood aside with her mother. Marriage was men’s business, and she was only there to observe, like the frescoes on the walls in their painted silence. Kisare wasn’t a tall man, but his posture was so straight and his gaze so alert that he drew the attention of everyone in the courtyard. He wore his hair short on the sides and longer and curling on the top, like a common soldier, but the fringed shawl draped over his long tunic was woven in the finest dyed wool. The Derumites weren’t as dark as the people near the coast, and Kisare’s brown hair and hazel eyes made an appealing contrast with his sun-bronzed skin. He was handsome enough, if one looked at him in that way, but to Rubati his physical form seemed to be an afterthought, a crude vessel to carry a watchful, calculating mind. He looked at her only once, and when their eyes met she felt that he understood her entire self after that one brief glance, and found her lacking. Beside her, her mother moved her hand to brush her fingers against Rubati��s. Rubati lifted her chin and stared at the fresco across from her, an inert bull waiting to be sacrificed, with white showing all around the fixed pupil of its eye. The men went off to drink afterward. Rubati and her mother returned to their seclusion in the house of the prince, far in the reaches of the palace on the second story. Rubati sat weaving as the conversation of her mother’s attendants blew around her like the hushed noise of a coming windstorm. She would have her own attendants soon, her own household in the prince’s house of Derum.

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i absolutely must tell you that Thirty-Nine Years is one of the most heart-breakingly beautiful pieces ive evr read in my life. i ache i yearn you are such a phenomenal talent

If only any of my predictions about future technology had come true 😂😂 my husband was big into Tesla back then (before Elon showed his true colors) and convinced me self-driving cars were imminent. Never listen to a man

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did you envision it, where you guys would become as close as you were?

i did, to be honest with you. that's what i was hoping. i remember watching geno play, and you know obviously he came over my second year, but i was waiting patiently for him to come over and hoping it was sooner rather than later. just having the opportunity to watch him prior to that, knowing how good he was. obviously you don't ever know, but he seemed special right from the start. and i think that yeah i did envision that, that's what i was hoping it would work out as. and it did. and i'm super grateful for it, and i think that whether it's moments like tonight or other things that we've shared, good and bad, that it's been pretty incredible to [...] play with him this amount of time.

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new season same sid

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SMILING THROUGH IT ALL CANT BELIEVE THIS IS MY LIFE

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SIGN UP HERE UNTIL AUGUST 1ST

Welcome to the Summer Boyfriends Exchange! This is a new fanworks exchange revolving around Sidney Crosby/Nathan MacKinnon. While these guys run around playing golf in matching outfits over the summer, come while away the rest of the offseason with us and take part in a gift exchange!

RULES

SCHEDULE:

Sign Ups Open: July 21th Sign Ups Close: August 1st Assignments Out: August 7th Works Due: October 2nd Collection Goes Live: October 5th Author Reveals: October 12th

SIGN UP HERE UNTIL AUGUST 1ST

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Tortoise Coming Out of Its Shell to Shame Mankind

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YESSSSSS JOIN US IN BUCKTOMMY HELL *gleeful cackle* (for real though, this is the hardest I've fallen for a new ship probably since my time in hockey fandom)

Lol I truly do not have time for fandom HOWEVER I look forward to reading fic on my phone when I should be sleeping

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Eagerly awaiting June 20th ⏳🕰️⏰

It's coming! It's ready to go! I still need to make the book trailer set to Kim Petras's "Whale Cock."

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I just read 'All The Way Through' again and I can't put into words how much I love this fic. No matter how many times I read it, it still moves me as much as the first day. The way the relationship develops, how well written the secondary characters are (I'm in love with Duper), how wonderfully well you write... I need Ao3 to let me kudos every time I reread it ♥️ Your fics always make me feel happy, but this one in particular I need to inject it into my veins, tattoo it all over me.

Thanks for sharing your writing with the rest of us ♥️♥️♥️

Well here I am answering this like three weeks later, sorry I forgot about my inbox for a minute lol. I had an absolute bear of a time writing that story and it felt like pulling teeth the whole way but I think it turned out pretty well in the end! If I were rewriting it now I think I would tighten up that final act but at the time it felt very necessary so who am I to second-guess myself now years later. Really glad you enjoy it so much as it was a true labor of love.

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and then there were four