#Reading Comprehension

[radicalhelmet]

ok to make this absolutely clear: OP wasn't saying "everything your mother told you was wrong and you're being cowed into solitary housewifery through paranoia," what she was saying was "everything your mother told you was right but you should risk it anyway for the sake of living, we risk so many other things without a second thought"

very subtle but critical distinction here between "it's safe to go outside" and "it's not safe to go outside but you should still do it"

HI IF YOU READ A POST SAYING 'IT SUCKS HOW EVERYONE ASSUMES WOMEN ARE STUPID AND THINKS THEY SHOULD NEVER DO ANYTHING VAGUELY RISKY EVER' COULD YOU PERHAPS THINK OF SOMETHING TO DO OTHER THAN GOING 'YEAH WOMEN ARE SOOOOO PARANOID AND THOUGHTLESS' MAYBE YOU COULD GO OUTSIDE AND FIND SOME INTERESTING BIRDS OR PERHAPS LEARN ABOUT IDENTIFYING MOSS

[prokopetz]

You better watch out, buddy – I have extremely unusual life experiences which I mistakenly believe are universal, and I'm about to misinterpret your post in ways you can't even imagine.

[liminalweirdo]

guys, in regards to reading comprehension, if it's something you struggle with — read the whole thing. If it's something you don't struggle with, yes you do — read the whole thing.

don't respond or comment or whatever before you have read the whole thing.

The number of times I've gotten responses from people who clearly didn't read beyond the first few sentences of what I wrote is genuinely staggering. Think about it: if you don't have time to read someone else's thoughts, why should anyone take time to read yours? Communication is a two-way street.

Take your time reading. It's okay if you have to take time. You don't need to be 100% ready with a response right away, ever, in real life convos or online. You are allowed to take the time you need to absorb information and develop a response. Anyone who says otherwise is an asshole.

If you have a physical copy of something, highlighting or underlining is extremely helpful. There's even studies that show that you take in more information if you're holding a pen in your hand, as if to take notes. Also, TAKE NOTES! It's fun and extremely helpful.

If you don't have a physical copy, try highlighting with your mouse or your keyboard as you read. It makes you slow down and absorb what you're reading. Highlight a sentence at a time, and move forward sentence to sentence. There are even programs that allow you to do this with any running text. It's usually called focus mode.

TL;DR read the whole text before you respond to something, for the love of spiders georg

[sephirthoughts]

those people need to read more books

i'm not saying people shouldn't be reading more books, but i do think it's funny how many people thinking "reading comprehension" is just about how good you are at reading books and not like. criticial thinking skills.

[screamscenepodcast]

for everyone reading Dracula Daily and being like -- “why did Dracula snarf down the entire crew of the Demeter like a real glutton like that? How much does he need to eat?” -- I need you to understand Dracula’s entire motivation in this novel. The reason he’s old and decrepit at the Castle is that he hasn’t been eating. This is the whole reason he’s leaving for England. The population of the local villages know what he is so he can’t lure people in or go hunting among the peasants anymore. He has to force things. He has to kidnap babies. And he’s feeding them to his brides to keep them young and beautiful while he ages from lack of food. He keeps Jonathan in his Castle for so long and finally the night before he leaves he loses his self-control and feeds on him, just a little, as a treat. He doesn’t need to eat the entire crew of the Demeter, he’s been going without food for a long time now. But he can and this crew has no defences against him, so he’s going to. He’s a starved man at an all-you-can-eat buffet and while he tries to pace himself at the beginning (the initial deaths are quite spaced out) by the end he, again, loses self control and just chows down. Note this behaviour -- this is the second time he’s lost self control right before the end of a plan -- it’ll be a recurring pattern. But the entire reason he’s going to England is that it’s an entire country filled with people who’ve basically never even heard of vampires and have no way to defend themselves. It’s for food. He’s an apex predator who’s eaten up his food supply and needs new hunting grounds.

[gothhabiba]

Some hints about evaluating scientific studies

Firstly, understand that something being published in a scientific journal (or an academic journal for the social sciences) does not automatically make it true. Publishers profit from publishing novel, eye-catching, surprising research, which means they are more likely to publish positive results than ones that didn't find a connection between given variables. This means that scientists' careers benefit when they get positive results. Certain institutions also benefit from certain findings above others (a committee for research on "obesity" that is funded by a government organisation tasked with ending it, for example, is likely to try to stretch the evidence to find a link between body weight and poor health outcomes). So how do people evaluate scientific studies, especially without being scientists themselves?

Literature reviews

Literature reviews, which aim to assemble and summarise most of the available or influential papers on a given issue, can be a good place to start when trying to research that issue. Typically, scientific studies shouldn't only be evaluated on a case-by-case basis (since even well-designed studies can be contradicted by other, equally well-designed studies), but a full survey of the different results people have gotten should be taken.

Background information and conflicts of interest

Try to find out who funded a given study. Who published the study? What do these people stand to gain from the results of the study being accepted? (For example: you might pay special attention to the experimental design on a study on whether a certain essential oil helps to reverse hair loss that was carried out by a company that sells that oil.)

In theory, many journals call for study authors to declare any conflicts of interest they may have in a special section of the paper. This section should also list funding sources. You might also look up the authors on linkedin or something to find where they're employed; also look into whether another conglomerate owns that company, &c.

Experimental design

If the study involves a survey, have the authors of the paper provided the questions that people were asked, so that you can evaluate them for potential ambiguity or confusing wording? Not being transparent about the exact wording of questions is a sign that a study isn't trustworthy.

What's the sample size? Is it large enough for the claim the study is making to be reasonable? (More on this in the next section.)

Does the experimental design make sense with what the researchers wanted to study? Are the claims that they make in the conclusion section something that could reasonably be proven or suggested by the experiment that they performed?

Does the experimental design "bake in" an assumption of the truth of its hypothesis? (For example, measuring skeletons to argue that they fall into statistically significant size groupings by sex, using skeletons that you sorted into "male" and "female" groups based on their size, is clearly circular).

How was data collected? People might change their answers to a survey, for example, if they have to speak to a person to give them, rather than writing them down anonymously. Self-reported information (such as a survey aiming to figure out average height or average penis size) is also subject to bias. A good study should be transparent about how the authors collected their data, and be clear about how this could have affected their results.

Also regarding surveys: do the categories that the authors have divided respondents into make sense? Are these categories really mutually exclusive? If respondents were asked to sort themselves into categories (e.g., to select their own race or ethnicity), is there any guarantee that they all interpreted the question / the boundaries of these categories the same way? How would this affect the results?

Interpretation of results

Could anything other than the conclusion that the authors came to explain the results of their experiment? For example, a study finding a correlation between two variables and assuming that this means one variable causes the other ("being in a lot of stress causes short stature" or vise versa) could be missing a secret third thing which is in fact causing both of those things (e.g., poverty). Check to make sure that the authors considered other explanations for their findings and ruled them out (for example, by controlling for other variables such as socioeconomic status).

Are the results of the study generalisable to the population that the authors claim they're generalisable to? For example, the results may not be true for the entire population if only cisgender men between the ages of 30 and 40 were tested. Sampling biases can also affect generalisability—if I surveyed my college to try to find out the percentage of women in the total population, you might ask "but is your college sure to have the same percentage of women as the Earth does?"

Statistics

Are the results statistically significant, or are they within expected margins of error?

Many studies provide a p-value (a number between 0 and 1) for their results. In theory, a p-value represents the chance that the study's results could have been achieved by random chance. If you flip a coin ten times (so, your sample size is 10), it's not very odd to get heads six times and tails four times, and you wouldn't accept that as proof that the coin lands on heads more often than tails. The p-value for that result would be high (that is, there's a high chance that the coin appears unfair only because of random chance). On the other hand, if you flip a coin 100,000 times and it lands on heads 60,000 of those times, that's much better evidence that the coin is not a fair one. The p-value would be much lower. Typically, a p-value lower than 0.05 is considered statistically significant.

In practice, there's more than one way to calculate p-values, and so studies sometimes claim p-values that seem absurdly low. A low p-value is not proof of a claim in and of itself. Check to make sure that the authors of the paper also provide the raw data, and not just the p-values; this indicates a concern with other people being able to independently evaluate their results, rather than just trying to get The Best Numbers.

Citations

If the study cites something that seems foundational to their claims or interpretation, try tracing it back to the paper that was cited. Does the source actually claim what the authors of the first study said it did? Does the source provide proof or support for the claim, or does it seem flimsy, like a "common-sense" assumption?

Replication

Check the studies that cite the one you're currently looking at. Has anyone else tried to replicate the study? What were their results?

What if I really, really don't want to read scientific studies?

That's fine. Not everyone is concerned enough with specific scientific questions for regularly reading scientific papers to be reasonable for them. Just keep in mind that not everything in a scientific journal is necessarily true; that profit motives and personal and institutional bias impact results (e.g. when some studies revealed a lack of poor health outcomes for "obesity," and many scientists responded by calling it a "paradox" that needed to be "solved"); and that pop science and journalistic reporting on science are subject to distortions from the same sources.

Try finding commentators on scientific matters whose output you like, and evaluate their writing the same way you would evaluate any other critical writing.

[batknot]

Internet Etiquette

Devastating! You just saw a take that you don't agree with! This is a check for reading comprehension and the practice of good faith. 

Analyze 

What emotion was this intended to inspire?

What was the goal the speaker was trying to achieve?

How could this be interpreted differently?

Is there context that would change the meaning?

Is the speaker qualified?

Reflect

What is your first reaction and why did you have that specific reaction?

Is it an issue that is harming you and/or did the group being harmed directly state that this harms them?

Do you accept the consequences that could result from interacting?

Is the speaker someone you can reason with?

What assumptions are you making about the speaker?

Speak

What is the goal of your words?

What audience are you catering towards?

Are you talking to the person with respect?

How could your words be interpreted differently?

What reaction will people have towards your words and how is it being achieved?

[sweaterkittensahoy]

safety signs???? No. Of course not. You fool.

I worked in high voltage. The DRAWING to show all the safety labels on the gizmo was TWELVE PAGES LONG because each safety sticker had to have its own page.

One of our guys in the field posted a photo of himself next to the gizmo. With the door open. Wearing zero safety gear.

To OPEN THE DOORS, he was supposed to be dressed like this:

Also, in looking up a photo of this (it's known as Cat4 Arc Flash Gear, btw), I found this photo:

WHERE ARE YOUR GLOVES GODDAMNIT

never forget the universal rule of the order of things: People Will Not Read It

[victusinveritas]

[iibislintu]

rereading a midsummer night's dream and the amount of trust the craftsmen have for the nobles' reading comprehension is just hilarious

"i wonder if they will understand that i'm actually not a lion" "i think we should make it clear that i'm a person playing a wall and not actually a wall" "are they in fact at all familiar with the concept of acting"

[fixing-bad-posts]

there i fixed it for you <3

[boxingcleverrr]

You're supposed to be able to do that on your owwwwwwn

[prokopetz]

I'm not mischaracterising your argument, I'm writing first-person speculative microfiction set in an alternative universe where you made a completely different post.

[sreegs]

we have "main character syndrome" and "movie brain" to describe people who think the world revolves around them or the world works like the movies but i think we need a new term called "headline brain" which probably can describe 90% of the loud posters on this web sight: people who read a headline and not the content of the article and base their activism on just the info gathered from headlines

[therobotmonster]

"Momma's boy?"

What is this, the 1932?

You know, it would really help if the hate mail came with some kind of indication of who the person is or what the hell they're talking about, because this? This, as the kids say, "ain't it, fam."

This is tumblr, you've got bad reading comprehension, and you're angry at someone else over it?

I've been insulted and threatened by real pros over the years. Actually cruel, insightful, deeply cutting stuff (more than once literally) from everyone from family members to men of the cloth.

You've got some basic curse words and homophobic insults, but nothing remarkable.

Well, I lie.

This one was remarkable.

[gothhabiba]

hello, i kno close reading aint the only way to analyse a text but im trying to find other ways of doin it but google is just givin me how to do close readings in your classroom things. idk im not a booksguy really tho id like to learn how to books better. do u have any like basic resources for ways to read a text an figure out whats goin on in it that isnt doing a close reading? thanks

Close readings are mostly associated with new criticism. This school of criticism, like every other, arose in a particular time and place and can be analysed as having arisen for a particular reason. Also like every school of criticism, it has its adherents and its detractors. But considering the "work" as its own whole, self-contained aesthetic object in the way that NC does is not the only way to read.

Some other approaches, off the top of my head, & the schools of criticism they're roughly associated with:

How does the work make you feel? What are your reactions to it? What emotions and associations does it conjure up? What is your spatial or temporal experience like reading the work (like, how does the work appear to you as something that unfolds over time, as you read it? When and how are you reading it)? How do your expectations about a certain work affect how you read? [Reader-response]

What is the economic and ideological history of the genre, form, and aesthetics of the work in question? What ideological function does the work seem to serve? Does it serve to convince its readers of anything, and if so, what political implications does its viewpoint have? What ideas of oppression, history, and the forms that resistance can take does the work present or seem to advocate for? What does it make visible or invisible, what does it make seem possible or impossible? [Marxist literary criticism / Marxist aesthetics]

When, where, and by whom was the work published? What else do we know about the author's opinions on aesthetics, politics, &c., and how do we know it? How are those opinions reflected by, or in tension with, what you see in the work? Were there any problems getting the work published, and, if so, do they have to do with the author's class or gender or politics, &c.? Where and how was the author living (richly or poorly, working as a maid in another household or employing servants or a wife to free up time for intellectual pursuits) while writing?

And, doubling down on when the work was published—what were the popular or dominant discourses about science, biology, human cognition, political economy, race, gender, war, &c. &c. when and where the author wrote and published? How does the work seem to mobilise, use, subvert, echo, further, or contest those discourses? How would the work's first readers have read it in light of the popular discourses they were familiar with? [contextualism; new historicism]

What materials was the book originally published in? Where did those materials come from? Was it cheaply or expensively made? How much was it sold for? Who would have been able to afford it? What does the form of the book (any illustrations? what's the typeface and size? margin size? hardcover or paperback?) imply about who is meant to read the work, and how they're meant to read it? What effect did the state of print technology at the time of the book's publishing have on its final form (e.g., it used to be impossible to have text and an image on the same page in a mass-produced book)? Where do the objects described in the book presumably come from, and by whose labour would they have been produced and transported? What does this say about the material lives of the characters? [Material culture studies]

What are the early notices and reviews of the book like, and where do they appear? Who wrote them and where did they publish them? Is the book mentioned in diaries and letters from around the time of its publication? How did the responses to the book change over time? How did audiences in different places, or of different demographics in other ways, respond to the book? What went into making the book accessible to new audiences over time? What extra-textual stuff (“paratext”: book covers, advertisements, interviews, reviews) influence how people read the work? [Reception history; translation studies; maybe fandom studies]

Who edited the work? How much control did the publishing house, and the publishing house's readers, have over the final format of the text? Who decided what the punctuation would be like, and where the chapter breaks would go? Who decided on the spelling (was it published at a time when spelling was standardized? Did the author's manuscript contain any idiosyncratic spellings? Did the publishing house have a house style)? Are there any ideological connotations to "correcting" this author's spelling? Was the author's manuscript typed or handwritten? Were there any problems reading their handwriting? How many versions of the manuscript were there, and how did the publishing house chuse which to work from? [Editorial theory]

These associations between methods of reading and schools of criticism are mostly just to give you terms to look up to read more. Scholars don't all necessarily belong firmly to a given school, and people often mix and match various modes of reading to be able to argue what they want to argue.